The brief
AtkinsRéalis holds the Quantitative Risk Analysis commission that supports National Highways’ RIS3 major projects portfolio. With governance oversight across multiple delivery partners, the commission needed senior QRA practitioners who could both run the modelling discipline at project level and act as a programme-level subject-matter expert at portfolio scale.
SOMA was engaged to lead Quantitative Cost and Schedule Risk Analysis (QCRA / QSRA) delivery across the regional portfolio — challenging modelling assumptions, aligning quantitative outputs with budgets and governance reporting, and strengthening the way QRA evidence fed into decision-making.
Our role
Two overlapping roles across the engagement:
- Programme Risk Lead — portfolio-level QRA subject-matter expert, setting QCRA / QSRA standards, reviewing supplier analyses, and presenting quantitative risk insight to senior regional stakeholders.
- Regional Risk Assurance Lead (Yorkshire & North East) — project controls (risk) assurance across the regional portfolio, governance oversight of supplier QCRA / QSRA activity, independent reviews and quantitative risk health-checks, and monthly / quarterly assurance reports.
- Interim Regional Risk Manager — earlier in the commission, seconded to oversee multiple highway schemes: reviewed and enhanced regional risk governance, embedded a structured risk-drawdown process, delivered training and workshop facilitation, and improved reporting alignment.
What we delivered
The engagement combined hands-on QRA delivery with governance uplift:
- QCRA run monthly and QSRA quarterly across the regional portfolio, with outputs calibrated to project budgets and governance milestones.
- Bespoke KPI templates and automated Safran inputs — simplifying QRA assurance activity and reclaiming weeks of project-team time over the commission.
- Structured risk-drawdown process embedded across regional schemes, giving delivery teams a defensible way to release contingency.
- System transition from Xactium to RiskHive, with supply-chain risk resources onboarded and upskilled on the new tooling.
- Portfolio-level QRA coaching and 1-to-1 mentoring with regional risk practitioners, lifting quantitative maturity across the commission.
What changed
The QRA function moved from a presentation of outputs to a presentation of insight. Assumption challenge, risk mapping, and the link between schedule uncertainty and cost exposure became the centre of QRA reviews — not the Monte Carlo curve itself. Senior regional leaders now use QRA as a decision tool, not a governance artefact.