2002 Futura International User Group Meeting
Dublin, 26-27 September 2002

The Year 2002 Futura User Meeting was held at the Gresham Hotel in central Dublin. It was attended by around 25 delegates from Scandinavia, the UK, Europe and Australia, representing a diverse range of industries as well as the public sector.

We maintained our tradition of focusing on ‘green issues’ as a key part of risk management, with Halvor Stormoen giving an introductory presentation about sustainable development. Halvor has considerable experience of the subject. Amongst other things, he was involved as an advisor to the Norwegian delegation at the 2002 Earth Summit in Johannesburg. The key challenge is how to develop projects which are sustainable in an environmental sense but which are still economic in a financial sense. Feedback from our small group discussions showed that sustainable development generally receives less priority than it deserves.

This year’s Conference included a number of ‘Snapshot’ presentations which gave a brief insight into a number of projects and experiences of the Method.

• Thomas Lillskogen from Futura presented the outcomes of two projects that had been analysed using the Method. In one case the analysis was sponsored by senior management, and in the other it was sponsored by a deputy project manager. In the first project the results were accepted and acted upon and a successful outcome came about. In the second case the results were rejected by senior management with serious consequences – the project overran by nearly three years!
• Arne Bjørn outlined how the method is being adopted in the Norwegian Defence Estates Agency (NDEA). Norwegian law now requires all public procurement projects with a capital investment value of more than 70 million Euros to be risk-analysed by an independent body before approval. Within NDEA, all projects costing 3.5 million Euros or more are assessed internally by Futura-trained facilitators.
• Gunnar Bohlin from Semcon Project Management AB gave an overview of his insights from applying the Method at Ericsson over many years. He stressed the benefits of developing a common understanding of a project, the need to be proactive in managing and mitigating the greatest uncertainties, and how the Method has enabled goals, budget and timescales to be met.
• Leif Gyllsdorff from IT consultant Guide Integration outlined his ideas about applying the Method to IT Systems Management Projects. Taking Problem Management as a typical example, he illustrated how the use of a Futura schedule uncertainty analysis can focus minds onto the key issues that are involved.

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Steen Lichtenbergs presentation

Steen Lichtenberg began the second day of the Conference by outlining how he and Lorens Borg from Futura have been assisting the Swedish Nuclear Power Inspectorate (SKI) with developing a more sophisticated way of planning for the financing of nuclear power station decommissioning. Funds are built up via a levy (fee per unit of electricity produced), and the question is – how much should this levy be?

A new procedure has been developed using the Lichtenberg Method which enables the many complex uncertainties to be modeled. These include uncertainties over how long production will last, what annual production will actually be, how much decommissioning will cost, and when it will actually be carried out. In addition, there is uncertainty over the rate that invested existing funds will grow, and also what discount rates to use for calculating Net Present Values (NPVs). Considerable care has also been taken to ensure that the Analysis Group involved will be a balanced one. Steen outlined the structure of the model that has been developed, and illustrated it with a simplified example.

The Conference also included two small group sessions – one about keys to effective preparation for a workshop, and the other about how an uncertainty analysis could be ‘fast-tracked’ in order to take up less time.

Finally, delegates were told that Futura International has recently changed its name to Futura One Oy. With this will come a new corporate identity, including a new logo:

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