Senior Consultant Ben Daymond asks: 'how can we know when we have provided a benefit?'
What do we mean by a benefit? One definition is: "a benefit is an outcome of change which is perceived as positive by a stakeholder." (Gerald Bradley, Benefit Realisation Management)
At Frazer-Nash, we deliver change through providing expert technical advice and bespoke solutions. But how do we know we have provided a benefit to the stakeholder? Sometimes the benefit can be clearly observed and reported. An example in asset integrity could be to determine the cause of corrosion of a failed in-service component. We identify the root cause and mitigations to avoid the component’s failure in the future. The benefit to the stakeholder is understanding why the failure occurred and how to avoid it moving forward.
But let's think about a more complex example of change: you want to improve monitoring and management of an asset, to protect against environmental degradation through life.
To start, you must have a clear vision and bounding objectives – let's say the vision is to reduce your cost of corrosion by 50%. The objective could be to stop unexpected failures, improve maintenance turn-around, and increase the life of your components. Then you need to build a benefits map that leads to the objectives you have set. One such benefit thread could be:
