Resilience Consulting
Our comprehensive process provides customized resilience strategies across a wide range of scales – from cities, organizations and asset portfolios to infrastructure networks and individual buildings.
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WHAT IS RESILIENCE? The will and ability to prepare, endure, adapt and thrive in a disruptive and changing environment.
In today’s world, every organization is vulnerable to disruption and change. The world is becoming more volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous (VUCA). A facility designed only a few years ago may not be fit for the future due to stresses such as climate change, technical advances or market changes.
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Organizations must be aware of risks and opportunities from a range of stresses. The use of AI and automation will change the way a facility runs, for example, and the workforce and skill sets needed. The effects of climate change on extreme weather events is another concern, and natural hazards continue to shock cities, communities and organizations. While these could cause a major business disruption, those with the foresight to embrace and prepare can turn this to an advantage and get ahead of the competition.
URBANIZATION
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A resilient organization is adaptive, agile, robust and competitive – harnessing experience and embracing opportunity to achieve longevity.
Organizational resilience provides a common platform for adapting to a dynamic business environment. It allows leaders to take measured risks with confidence and to respond quickly and appropriately to both opportunities and threats. While risk prevention and mitigation is an important part of resilience, business improvement is also critical. Resilient organizations are agile and proactive – aware of, anticipating, creating and taking advantage of new opportunities. Most companies have taken some steps to improve their resilience. But effective measures require an understanding of the complex dependencies and interconnectivities of systems. We have developed a framework that provides a comprehensive assessment of the resilience of your organization or asset. This holistic approach offers many benefits:
Facilitates clear decision-making and prioritization of resources Increases strategic adaptability, agile leadership and robustness Provides a business case for investing in resilience measures Identifies cross-departmental co-benefits leading to cost savings Leads to the realization of competitive advantage
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We have developed a framework and approach that can provide a comprehensive assessment of the resilience of your organization.
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At Thornton Tomasetti, we prioritize how organizations can create and protect value, now and in the future.
Our resilience specialists integrate input from our technical experts to offer a holistic approach to resilience that aligns with international standards and best practices, including the BS 65000 organizational resilience standard. Our Road Map to Resilience leads to a comprehensive understanding of an organization’s or asset’s resilience. We start with a series of workshops and stakeholder interviews to understand the value your organization delivers, and to define and set objectives. Then we perform a shock and stress assessment, which examines obvious hazards – flooding, earthquake, fire, etc. – as well as stresses such as geopolitical factors, climate change and technological advances and the interaction between these elements. We also forecast how these shocks and stresses may change over time, to help future-proof your organization. Next, we analyze the systems that deliver value within the organization to diagnose critical vulnerabilities and evaluate how they may be impacted by the identified shocks and stresses. These vulnerabilities include physical systems and infrastructure as well as the people within the organization and its risk governance processes and culture. Our unique adaptive-capacity survey measures the organization’s agility, which, when coupled with our review of risk-mitigation measures, provides a well-rounded picture of overall resilience. Finally, we use our innovative resilience framework to quantify organizational or asset resilience. This baseline helps prioritize areas for improvement and assists in building the business case for investing in resilience improvements, because the cost-benefit ratio can be clearly measured and articulated over time.
ROAD MAP TO RESILIENCE
Diagnostic
Strategic
Implementation
CapacityBuilding Monitoring Improvement
We offer comprehensive insights into your organization’s resilience. Our multifactor resilience framework considers all aspects of an organization (and its supply chain) and is centered around how it delivers value. This gives a comprehensive yet easily understood picture of how resilient an organization is and where more focus is needed. This framework paradigm can be applied at a range of scales, from cities and organizations to individual facilities, and anything in between.
ASSET RESILIENCE FRAMEWORK
Blue denotes resilience demand; green denotes capacity. The largest gaps indicate areas in most need of resilience building.
Leadership & Governance Operations & Management
Research & Innovation 90 80 70
Society & Community
Financial Systems & Assets
60 50 40 30 20 Resilience Rating
Market & Customers
Controls, Rules & Regulations
77
People & Culture
Product & Services
Physical Assets & Resources
ICT Systems & Resources Logistics, Partners & Suppliers
Resilience Demand
Resilience Capacity
We work closely with clients to realize the benefits of investing in resilience. Once resilience needs are identified, we build capacity through an integrated mix of upfront risk reduction coupled with improvements in adaptive capacity. Our advisors and technical experts use cost-benefit assessments to assist in developing strategies and implementing change over a broad range of areas. Unlike other advisors, Thornton Tomasetti has extensive engineering, science and risk expertise to complement our resilience consulting.This results in capacity-building initiatives that are economical, realistic and technically sound. We provide the following resilience-related services:
ADVISORY SERVICES • • • • • • • • • •
Multihazard Risk Assessment Resilience Investment Appraisal Resilience Strategy Development Risk & Resilience Governance & Management Resilience Audit Security & Counter-Terrorism Strategy Change Management Risk & Resilience Data Management Community Resilience Initiatives Probable Maximum Loss (PML) Studies
PHYSICAL VULNERABILITY REDUCTION • • • • • • • • • •
Earthquake Engineering Water/Wastewater Flood Mitigation Systems Engineering Climate Change Mitigation & Adaptation Geotechnical Engineering Environmental Engineering Fire/Blast Engineering Structural Engineering Asset Integrity Assessments
BUSINESS CONTINUITY, INCIDENT RESPONSE & RECOVERY PLANNING • • • • •
Emergency Response Planning Business Continuity Planning Incident Management Plans Information Management Systems Training & Exercises
Our world-class experts can assist you with a full spectrum of resilience services. AMY MACDONALD is an associate principal and global head of resilience at Thornton Tomasetti. She specializes in providing private and public sector clients with strategies to offset physical, operational and financial risk. Amy‘s experience – in engineering risk assessment and response and recovery experience, as well as infrastructure design and land development – spans four continents. Her post-disaster experience includes response to hurricanes Harvey, Irma and Maria; Sandy; earthquakes in Nepal; and leadership of the engineering response to the Canterbury earthquake sequence in New Zealand. Building upon this experience, Amy leads the development of integrated, multidisciplinary resilience strategies for complex scenarios where natural hazards intersect with the built environment. She manages the development and design of physical resilience measures and emergency preparedness plans for healthcare, commercial and real estate clients throughout the Americas. AMacdonald@ThorntonTomasetti.com | +1.917.661.8208
CAROLINE FIELD has more than 20 years of experience in engineering consultancy for the built environment. The firm’s Head of Resilience, Europe, she helps clients develop risk-based, comprehensive approaches that balance physical mitigations with adaptive capacity, consider shocks and stresses as well as social and economic factors, and incorporates future-trends analysis. Using a resilience framework that supports decision-making and prioritization, Caroline develops and implements resilience policy and strategy for cities, master plans, campuses, organizations, infrastructure systems and buildings. She is a Chartered Engineer with the Institute of Civil Engineers in the UK, a Member of the Register of Security Engineers and Specialists, a licensed professional engineer in California and a member of the American Society of Civil Engineers. She develops standards and techniques with organizations like the British Standard for City Resilience, which she chairs, and the ASCE Infrastructure Resilience Division, where she co-chairs the SPEED committee. CField@ThorntonTomasetti.com | +44.(0).786.084.1073
RICHARD LOOK has worked at every level of government, developing policy, managing requirements, performing systems-mapping, implementing strategy and running critical operations. A joint winner of the Royal Charter International Research Award, he has first-hand experience in a broad spectrum of resilience planning and implementation and brings a practical, integrated, resilience approach to VUCA problems. Richard’s systematic, performance-based approach — honed through 17 years of practice — centers on creating and protecting value by balancing potential opportunities and threats with client appetite for risk and cost as well as end-user safety needs. As a senior project engineer, he applies a collaborative, innovative systems approach, breaking problems down to root causes and applying core principles to ensure robust, effective and efficient solutions. Most recently, he has focused on providing resilience consulting services for cities, organizations and buildings. RLook@ThorntonTomasetti.com | +44.(0).786.084.1077
Thornton Tomasetti optimizes the design and performance of structures, materials and systems for projects of every size and level of complexity. An employee-owned organization of engineers, scientists, architects and other professionals collaborating from offices worldwide, we support clients by drawing on the diverse expertise of our integrated practices. We are committed to being a sustainable and enduring organization and the global driver of innovation in our industry.
www.ThorntonTomasetti.com