PMO Risk Transformation — Northumbrian Water

The brief

Northumbrian Water’s PMO was running a £350m project portfolio spanning 400+ active projects across the business. Risk management existed, but identification discipline, register quality and contingency alignment were uneven — and the sheer volume of governance activity was consuming operational capacity faster than it could be created.

SOMA, engaged through Gardiner & Theobald, was brought in to lead risk transformation inside the PMO: rebuild the risk process, upskill the team, and realign contingency planning with the actual risk exposure sitting on the portfolio.

Our role

SOMA acted as PMO Risk Lead, reporting to the Risk Management Director and leading a team of 5+ risk professionals across the portfolio. The scope covered:

• Process refinement — working with the Risk Management Director to redesign identification, quantification and reporting processes, removing duplicated effort and embedding proactive risk identification in the PMO cadence.
• Register governance — maintained comprehensive risk registers across 400+ projects, with consistent metalanguage, clear ownership, and alignment between qualitative scoring and quantitative exposure.
• Tailored workshops — facilitated risk workshops sized to the project rather than the template, with different depth for capital, regulatory, and operational workstreams.
• Opportunity Management training — a formal training programme designed to shift the culture from threat-only to threat-plus-opportunity, and build identification capability across the PMO.
• Senior reporting — progress reporting to senior leadership, with a clear line from individual-project risk exposure through to portfolio-level contingency position.

What changed

Two numbers tell the story. Operational efficiency: 70 man-weeks of PMO effort reclaimed by optimising the risk management processes and removing duplication. Capability: a 96% uplift in staff risk-identification proficiency following the Opportunity Management training.

Behind the numbers, contingency planning was realigned with the actual risk exposure sitting across the 400+ projects — reducing the gap between provision and reality and lowering the probability of financial overrun.