SCIMITAR RISK MANAGEMENT

Antelope principals Aidan Ward and Susannah Finzi originally developed Scimitar Risk Management in the early 1990s. The system has evolved over many years of practice and remains a highly regarded, rigorous approach to managing risk which is as challenging to its practitioners as it is effective in promoting a robust organisation.

The insights which informed Scimitar have provided the basis of almost all of Antelope work with clients. The system has been used on large programmes lasting 2 years or more and, in an appropriately scaled-down form, on micro-projects lasting less than 10 days, but where outcomes were equally business critical.

We designed Scimitar as a structured management system for use when substantial business is at stake. We recognised that successful risk management enables an organisation to respond in a timely and effective way to the risks that it faces. Even today, very few risk systems work at this level.

The barriers to timely and effective action generally lie in complex stakeholding and over-lapping political agendas. Our first step is to form a group of key stakeholders to resolve the organisational response to key risks, thus clearing the deck for action.

With Scimitar we focus on the achievement of business objectives, not on the avoidance of risk and cost. At all times options for how to achieve the underlying business purposes are kept open.

The system captures, connects and manages risks at a project, programme or organisational level. It identifies risks, manages stakeholders and generates actions to pre-empt or contain risks before they manifest themselves as events. It aims at the continuous effective forecasting and containment of risk events, rather than repairing the damage from risks that have already caused failures.

Examples of some of work with Scimitar can be seen on our portfolio page.

Scimitar is formally documented as a manual, with supporting software, executive summary and presentation materials for clients implementing and maintaining the system, and support is provided by Antelope principals.