Enhancing enterprise risk management at the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute

Challenge

In order to build upon and advance their Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) program, the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI) hired Guidehouse to provide their expertise. NHLBI needed a more robust approach to manage risks year-round, account for different types of business, operational, and scientific risks, and increase the engagement of staff in the risk management process.

 

Approach

To support NHLBI and the challenges it faces in an ever-changing risk environment, Guidehouse (1) shaped an ERM approach that complied with the updated US Office of Management and Budget Circular A-123 guidance; (2) tailored the framework to align to NHLBI’s mission and goals; (3) promoted a risk-ready culture for staff to quickly share potential risks and help create solutions; and (4) provided ways to improve processes to respond to risk and save time throughout the organization. Our team worked diligently with ERM program stakeholders to identify, assess, prioritize, and respond to risks.

 

Impact

NHLBI sought to be trailblazers in the space, shaping a program grounded in ERM principles, but tailored to support the Institute’s specific organizational needs, challenges, and culture. Guidehouse helped NHLBI design and launch a customized ERM program to provide insight on the most important risks that shape the Institute, inform decisions at the executive level, promote risk conversations across teams, and enable risk oversight from the top. Resulting from the project, we helped NHLBI:

• Establish a new leadership oversight body to encourage discussion across functions and spot shared risks
• Identify more than 20 top risks and over 300 associated controls to support risk-informed decisions
• Define an ERM process that combines guiding standards with NHLBI’s unique culture and priorities
• Pilot internal control and testing approaches to determine whether existing risk response strategies work
• Inform improvements for business processes and structures through 10+ completed corrective actions
• Create a change communications plan, with more than 15 products to share with staff
  
  
  

We help clients like NHLBI effectively transform ERM from merely a check-the-box compliance exercise into a fundamental component of how they do business in a rapidly evolving environment.

Guidehouse is a leading global provider of consulting services to the public and commercial markets with broad capabilities in risk consulting, management, and technology. We are successfully supporting numerous large-scale ERM programs across the federal government, including design, implementation, and ongoing maturation.