Leading marine equipment and vessel designer and manufacturer adopts uniform risk management across businesses to manage costs and compliance
Royal IHC enables its customers to execute complex projects from sea level to ocean floor in the most challenging of maritime environments. They are a reliable supplier of innovative and efficient equipment, vessels and services for the offshore, dredging and wet mining markets.
With a broad, worldwide customer base that includes oil and gas corporations, offshore contractors and government authorities, the company employs over 3,000 employees based across Europe, the Middle East, Asia Pacific and the United States.
Project management is core to IHC’s integrated systematic approach for turnkey delivery to customers. In recent years the company has recognised the importance of risk management in programs across all of its businesses to ensure compliance, meet safety requirements and to manage costs efficiently, both to support processes and meet contractual requirements.
The company has adopted the Management of Risk® (M_o_R; Axelos Global Best Practice) risk management methodology and invested in Active Risk Manager (ARM) software to fully support the discipline throughout the business.
A UK- based business unit had also been using ARM successfully on a local scale in commercial projects, and having reviewed other solutions, IHC felt that ARM could be configured to support the risk management methodology now in place. ARM provides the centralized database that supports the company-wide approach that IHC wished to take. An intuitive interface was easy for the project and business managers to use, aiding user acceptance.
Adopting a uniform risk management culture
Robbert Zijlmans, Corporate Risk Manager at Royal IHC said; “We liked the intuitive interface of ARM that makes it easy for the project managers to use and the strong client base of Sword Active Risk demonstrated its experience in the sector.
The challenge has been embracing a uniform, world-wide risk management culture – using ARM has actually made that easier as the project managers can quickly see the benefits of having more control and visibility of risks and potential costs, without the tooling being an additional barrier.”
An enterprise risk management (ERM) solution, ARM addresses the risk management needs of all parts of the business – from individual departments to the organization as a whole. From managing project and program risk to strategic business planning, ARM helps IHC to identify, analyse, monitor, mitigate and report on risk across the enterprise.
“Ultimately we intend to use ARM strategically as well as to support our projects and operations, providing more insight and facilitating closed-loop risk management.” said Zijlmans.
As a result of the centralized data and common practices, the project managers have also been able to share information and interact across programs and projects, where previously there had been more of a ‘silo’ approach to their project risk management working.
Improved insight for Business Control and timely management of risks
A key benefit to IHC since using ARM is the reporting functionality. Whereas before reports were produced on standalone projects, now they can be consolidated easily and highlight the consequences of possible costs, delays and slippages across different business units and projects.
This structured approach to reporting provides a better overview for senior managers and Business Control and enables IHC to take timely measures to mitigate risks.
Having the information also enables IHC to ensure that contractual obligations are met, reducing the risk of financial and legislative penalties. It ensures greater visibility of critical risks, reduces surprises and supports in working towards an audit trail across the enterprise.
“With ARM we have more data and our reports and analyses are becoming more fact-based, making our calculations increasingly more accurate through faster risk-based feedback loops. It gives us better business control, such that we can identify the risks and implications, whether safety, slippages or costs that might affect our legislative compliance or financial restraints,”concluded Zijlmans.