Course objectives: To understand how audit can add value in the 3 lines defence model and assist auditors in complying with the EU company law directive—article 41, section 2b. The Directive requires internal audit committees, for the first time, to monitor internal control, internal audit and risk management systems on Major Projects and Programmes.

“More risk management skills might be needed in companies' internal audit committees to satisfy the latest European Union (EU) company law”, Richard Nelson, former president of the ECIIA, the auditing profession's European umbrella organisation.

Benefits of the course– delegates will take away:

•  How the audit function compliments project management and risk management
•  The concepts and practical application of a risk based approach to project review
•  Understand how to identify, mitigate and control project risks effectively
• Sell the benefits of proactive risk based audit of key projects
• Audit major projects with confidence
• Techniques to ensure that more projects meet their agreed objectives
• The ability to read early warning signs
•  The influence of the Supply Chain on project success
• Lessons learnt from major projects such as Heathrow Terminal 5, Wembley and Copenhagen Metro.

Course focus and features:For auditors, major change projects and programmes present some special challenges that are the focus of this course:

• They involve many and diverse stakeholders
• They have high importance and high risk
• They involve political and societal risk
• There complexity may mean that issues can be hard to see until it is too late
• Human behaviour and biases add to the complexity and contribute to the problem

What should be done? Many high profile project disasters turn out to have had risk management and governance procedures in place that typify accepted practice. These standard controls were not strong enough to provide control.
 

This course looks at why those controls sometimes fail, including in-depth coverage of the human behaviour that is so often the cause of our difficulties. It goes on to examine the early clues that should alert auditors to problems ahead and gives suggestions on how to test objectively things that often seem to be matters of conflicting opinion. A special feature of this course is the stress on controls strong enough to be effective in high pressure change.

Course Director: David Hancock

Dr.David Hancock is Head of Risk and Value for Transport for London. He is responsible for risk and opportunity across a £15 billion capital upgrade programme which includes; underground, rail, and surface (roads, buses and river services) throughout London. Renowned internationally as a leading thinker and practitioner in the risk field, he champions the case for rethinking project management as a social interaction rather than delivery through the application of process and policy. David was educated at the University of Nottingham where he obtained a degree and PhD in engineering. He later added an MBA from the University of Bath and a political and social science qualification from the University of Oxford. He is the author of the bestselling book Tame, Messy and Wicked Risk Leadership published by Gower in which he developed the concept of risk leadership. He has been involved with many public sector projects including PFI and PPP contracts on water, roads and rail projects. David has worked with the public, private and voluntary sectors and in the past has been:

• Director of risk and assurance for two London Mayors (Boris Johnson and Ken Livingstone)
• Executive Director of a £500m turnover engineering consultancy and run his own independent consultancy. His clients have included; Ministry Of Defence, Highways Agency, Shell, Qatar Petroleum, BAE Systems and a variety of engineering, contracting and consulting organisations.
• From 1998-2001 he was responsible for creating and delivering the opportunity-risk management system for the
  successful £4.2bn Terminal 5 Project at Heathrow.
• He worked with British Airways (BA), British Airports Authority (BAA) and their supply chain, which is considered industry leading in project and opportunity/risk management for project delivery.
• From 1996-1997 he was the risk manager for the £500m Copenhagen Metro project integrating companies from 5 different national backgrounds into a single risk management process.
• He developed and honed his risk management skills and techniques on the complex and politically sensitive Nirex
  underground nuclear waste repository.

In 1998 he was voted Public sector risk manager of the year and is a board director of Alarm (The National Forum for Risk Management in the Public Sector). He is also a member of the programme board for the Major Projects Association, and a teaching Fellow at Cranfield University in their School of Management.