Facilitation offering

Much of our facilitation is carried out at part of wider management consulting across the full range of our specialist areas. Examples include:

• System mapping with groups working on complex policy and decisions
• Evaluation processes including Theory of Change creation with groups planning a major intervention or policy development
• Stakeholder mapping with groups considering industry-wide changes
• Team and process development with groups involved in long term planning for science or policy programmes
• Independent facilitation of major programme boards and steering groups

We also undertake facilitation independent of our wider consulting work where we have relevant domain or client experience.

We offer faciliation of in-person events, online virtual events and where required, hybrid events.

Our past facilitation clients include:

Defra, Environment Agency, Natural England, BEIS, Food Standards Agency, Health and Saefty Executive (mental health), National Highways, The Royal Academy of Engineering, The Royal Society, The Local Government Association (Health and Wellbeing), Network Rail and Railways Operating Companies, water infrastructure companies, Joseph Rowntree Foundation (poverty), OfWAT and CECAN (The Centre for Evaluation of Complexity Across the Nexus of Food, Energy, Water and Environment).

Facilitation as a Risk Solutions core professional skill

Facilitation of specialist groups has been a part of Risk Solutions’ consulting work since we formed the company in 1997, supporting both the elicitation of information to inform our projects and the dissemination of our work to stakeholders.

In 2010, one of our founders, Paul Brand, returned to the company after 9 years away working and training in Organisational Development (OD) bringing our team new perspectives and skills in group dynamics and design of organisational interventions. This led to a broadening of our offering in the areas of stakeholder engagement and large group facilitation.

In 2012, we sponsored Paul in gaining professional accreditation with the International Association of Facilitators (IAF). We continue to maintain our links with the IAF here in the UK and Internationally, drawing on this premier community of facilitation experience and seeking to model the IAF Core Competences and IAF Statement of Values and Ethics in all our facilitation work.

Facilitation thinking

We are always happy to share our thoughts on Facilitation, but do not want to add ‘just another how to’ guide when there are so many good ones available – many of them by people we know and have worked with – often via the IAF. We are compiling a ‘top sources’ list which we commend – (Coming soon).

Where we believe we have something specific to share – we do it here and via posts on our LinkedIn Account.

Here are some thoughts on specific facilitation issues that we find helpful and use in our own work.

… and just for fun

A waltz through a half day workshop in just a minute…

This 2 minute video was of a half day we spent with friend at Copper Consulting designing a model of the benefits of early stakeholder and community engagement on major infrastructure schemes, in order to create a succinct presention of how early engagement is vital to successful outcomes. This was stage two of a three part process, so you see us begin by posting up a set of issues developed earlier in stage 1. We worked on these during the half day workshop shown here. The third stage was refining the workshop outputs into a simple system influence model (shown at the end of the video).
Oh… and if you are pendantically asking why the accompanying “Minute Waltz” lasts more than one minute, go here for the explanation.