Last month was a busy time for Glasgow City Council (GCC), when over 3,000 athletes from all four corners of the continent descended on the city to compete in the inaugural 2018 European Championships
Running such a massive event poses several complex issues, such as managing the risks and potential issues that could disrupt event scheduling, ticketing, and coordinating efforts with broadcasting partners. With an estimated 1.03 billion spectators watching from all over Europe, GCC harnessed the power of Ideagen’s performance and risk management software solution, Pentana Risk, to ensure that the fortnight of sport went ahead without a hitch.
Danielle Thomson, Programme Manager for Glasgow 2018, spoke enthusiastically about their use of the product, highlighting the benefits of being able to record and manage all risks and issues within an integrated system as being particularly valuable:
“At Glasgow 2018, we used Pentana Risk to gather information on risks and issues, reviewed and updated this information at regular review meetings with teams and senior management, and ran regular reports on all the information we gathered for various stakeholders.
“To have a live, central system ensuring that all functional areas were recording and managing their risks and issues in a standardised way was very important to us, as it ensured that there was only a single version of information at any one time.”
Before implementing the software, these crucial processes were carried out manually, which meant that more staff were spending longer amounts of time collating and interpreting that data, leading to increased time costs and obsolete findings.
“Previously, all risks and issues were managed via spreadsheets. We had one spreadsheet per functional area to be submitted to the Project Management Office every four weeks. This meant that there was a collation of 16 spreadsheets required every four weeks, and that information went out of date very quickly.
“With Pentana Risk, all the latest information is available live in the system at any point in time, which means less time is spent pulling the information together manually.”
Danielle stated that Pentana Risk also enabled her and her team to perform a number of more sophisticated risk-based tasks that would not have been possible beforehand.
“We can perform instant reports and analysis on our data, and this information can be grouped by sport or venue, which means that individual reports are targeted towards specific groups.
“We can also use keyword searches, as well as make sure that all risks are reviewed before they are uploaded, preventing any gaps or duplication of information.”
One of the most valuable benefits Danielle experienced with Pentana Risk was enhancements in clarity and visibility of what was going on in real-time.
“Pentana Risk gave everyone full visibility across the organisation. Being able to highlight all the risks spread across the whole programme, and ensure that all controls were coordinated meant that risk owners were 100% clear when it came to identifying and managing their own risks.”
Glasgow 2018 European Championships might now be over, but Glasgow City Council are already planning for the next major sporting event to visit the city; the 2020 UEFA European Football Championships. Danielle has already recommended Pentana Risk to the Euro 2020 host city project team. Additionally, GCC’s Corporate Governance Team are looking to expand the use of the product across the Council as they assess ways to improve their risk management function.
Fraser Doig
As Product Marketing Executive at Ideagen, Fraser is responsible for understanding the needs of our customers and how our software can help them become leaders in their industry. Fraser brings to his role a desire to help organisations drive quality and control in their business processes as a way of achieving operational excellence.