SERVICES - summary

Resilience

Exercising

Research has just been completed on effective approaches for the design, development and conduct of exercises (simulations). This research has been developed into a practical field guide and will be published as an ebook in December 2016 and as a hard copy book in early 2017.

Resilience

Critical infrastructure

Following our ground breaking work for the Australian Government, (developing new ways of mapping and assessing dependency, vulnerability, & criticality for the national critical infrastructure), and for the Victorian Government and privately owned critical infrastructure (including new approaches for assessing criticality, resilience capability, and the VicCAT online assessment tool), we are now engaged in further R&D and advisory work in the area of resilience building for the sector.

Resilience

Capability assessment

In collaboration with universities in Australia and Malaysia we have developed a unique approach for assessing organisational resilience capability. This includes a framework for undertaking a strategic and operational gap analysis and subsequent strategy development. The research has been completed and is now being prepared for publication in an international journal.

Resilience

Critical incidents

After several years of research in the real world, including leading the response to a wide range of critical incidents, we have created an impressive body of theoretical and practical knowledge in this area. In collaboration with other experts, this work is now being formulated into a comprehensive field guide - the first of its kind in the world. Although still in development, we expect to have a pre--publication review draft available by March 2017. Keep watching this space for further news.

VUCA

VUCA Leadership

VUCA is an acronym originally coined by the US military and is used to describe the changing and challenging environment most organisations now have to operate within. VUCA thus describes an environment of high 'Volatility', 'Uncertainty', 'Complexity', and 'Ambiguity'. Our research is looking at the role of leadership and decision making in managing VUCA. This project is in its final stages with a white paper due for completion in late November 2016.

Safety

MoM -Safety

In collaboration with the US Government's Office of Learning, we have developed a unique approach for operational safety: Margin of Manoeuvre (MoM) uses principles of neuropsychology to provide a sensemaking framework for use in high risk environments. Now in use with first responders in the US it is being introduced into Australia. This work was published in two journals in 2015 (see Publications).

MoM

Resilience

Margin of Manoeuvre (MoM) was originally developed for front-line safety. The concept has been further adapted as a sensemaking, capability development and assessment tool for critical infrastructure and is in use with the Australian and Victorian State Governments, and a wide range of private operators. Papers on this work are currently in development for publication in 2017.

Risk

The Risk Wheel

The Risk Wheel is a novel hand held risk calculator. It is a pocket sized mechanical device that can be used in all environments with no dependency on batteries or mains power. Originally developed for use in the field for a State Government agency, it has been further adapted for use by a major University and more recently by the UN for operations on the Indian subcontinent. Work is now underway to develop a 'vanilla' tool that can be customised by any user organisation.

Risk

Disruption-related risk

In collaboration with some of the world's leading experts in risk management, a project is now underway to develop a new Handbook for Standards Australia focusing on unique approaches for managing disruption-related risk. A revised Standard will be released for publication in the first half of 2017 with a supporting Handbook to be released shortly afterwards.

Travel Risk

Extreme & hostile environments

Organisations are increasingly requiring their people to work in environments that are remote, hostile and complex. Of concern is that an many of these travelers and workers are inexperienced and untrained, In collaboration with the Global Centre of Research and Engagement, we are developing a state of the art body of knowledge for working in such environments. The Field Guide to Working in Complex, Remote and Hostile Environments will be published in late 2017.

Security

Security-related risk

Some years ago we codified our research and published it as the world's first Standards' publication for the management of security-related risk (published by Standards Australia as HB167). We are now working with a number of international experts in security management to produce a new Handbook for security-related risk that incorporates the latest research and practices. We expect that this will be published by Standards Australia in the second half of 2017.

Gaming

Incident Management

We originally developed a hands-on gaming simulation (BCMEX) to enable organisational leadership to train and rehearse sensemaking, decision making and resource management in a near to live action simulated environment. Several years ago we expanded this to a more comprehensive and broader critical incident management simulation (INCIDEX) to provide a rich training and coaching experience for leadership, response and incident management teams.