How a value chain approach helps us to ‘join the dots’?

Savina Carluccio explores what we mean by resilience value, and how we are using value chains to connect the concepts of resilience and value.

We define the critical functions of infrastructure as the ability to sustain societal needs through protecting, connecting and/or providing essential services. Ensuring that these are delivered and maintained in ordinary as well as extraordinary circumstances is what we define as resilience value.

One of the biggest challenges for critical infrastructure is breaking down the silos between infrastructure providers and customers along the supply chain so that everyone is focused on delivering resilience value where they can.

At the Resilience Shift, we have found that a value chain is extremely useful for connecting the concepts of resilience and value in a context that will be familiar to everyone working on the design, delivery, operation of infrastructure systems.

This concept of “joining the dots” helps articulate the contribution of all parties in delivering the overall function and value of infrastructure systems, and also helps align stakeholders behind a common outcome.

Above all it helps us to:

• Articulate WHY it is important that resilience value is created, enabled and protected at each stage and carried through the value chain because the resilience increases the value of the service provided, by reducing the impact of disruptions.
• Show HOW to ‘do’ resilience by mapping tools and approaches that can be used to enhance resilience at different parts of the value chain and at a level of sophistication appropriate for stakeholder role.
• Indicate WHERE the entry points and opportunities to create, enable and protect resilience value are for different stakeholders in the value chain and explain how they are connected.

Find out more about how we are using a value chain approach in our  work on resilience tools and approaches.

A way forward for our ‘Tools and Approaches’ project

Savina Carluccio leads the resilience tools project

In late June the Resilience Shift project team and grantees on our ‘Tools and Approaches‘ project got together for a two-day opportunity framing workshop.

Caroline Field and Richard Look from MMI Engineering, Simon Gill, Marίa Carrera, and Mairi McLean from Schumacher Institute, and Igor Linkov, joined Savina Carluccio, Áine Ní Bhreasail and Xavi Aldea from the Resilience Shift and Marcela Ruibal from ValueLab BV.

The objective of the workshop was to better define what the opportunity in hand is, how we will work together and what success will look like in the short and long term.

We had a great session with some really interesting thought exchanges that helped us reach consensus on our next steps.

This project ultimately aims to connect practitioners, decision makers and other stakeholders with the tools and approaches needed to enhance resilience of critical infrastructure. We want to help them make better decisions on how to ‘do’ resilience and add resilience value in their day jobs.

We believe that a value chain approach to resilience of critical infrastructure may just do this. Value will be delivered by connecting practitioners, decision makers and others in the value chain to the tools and approaches relevant to their role in creating, protecting and enabling resilience value.

We are excited about the opportunity to develop and test the value chain approach for resilience of critical infrastructure, as Igor Linkov put it: “you are the first to connect the idea of Value Chain and Resilience and it not only is attractive to practice, but also good for science in general.”

MMI Engineering, Schumacher Institute, Igor Linkov and Valuelab with the Resilience Shift at our tools and approaches workshop

To this end, we are looking to develop a platform to provide practitioners and other stakeholders with access and connection to tools and approaches in a way that is meaningful, practical and user-centred. The next few months will help us define why and how our proposed platform can drive resilience practice adoption and help people do their jobs better, wherever they are in the value chain for resilience of critical infrastructure.

We have all agreed the success statement for the project to be that, by end of 2018, we will have demonstrated the concept and collected the information to needed inform the design and delivery in 2019 of an online interactive online platform delivering value to its users.

Next steps will be a series of workshops bringing and users to share knowledge and experience of resilience tools/approaches and best practice to support successful implementation and sustained use. Watch this space, and please get in touch if you’d like to get involved.

EOI Response – Thank you!

We were excited to receive 35 expressions of interest, in response to our recent call for partners to work with us to create a repository of tools and approaches related to infrastructure resilience.

On behalf of the Resilience Shift team, I’d like to thank all those that responded. Responses represented an excellent mix of academia, non-profit, SMEs and larger commercial organisations.

We are in the process of reviewing and assessing these, and we’ll be following up with respondents soon.  We’re exploring different modes of engagement with those who responded, in order to make the most of this great community of practice.

Thanks again for your interest in the Resilience Shift.

Savina

p.s. This won’t represent the only opportunity to work with us in 2018, or beyond. Please keep an eye out on our website and/or social media streams for future opportunities.

Expression of interest: Apply by 18 April 2018 (Deadline extended)

Help us to make resilience practical, tangible and relevant. You can apply to become a partner/grantee of the Resilence Shift. The deadline for this application round is 16 April 2018. Interested applicants should note that this is not the only opportunity to work with us through 2018 and beyond.