Davion Systems Ltd was founded in 1991 as a project risk management consulting company based in Ottawa, Canada. With many clients in both the public and private sectors we soon realized the need for software risk management tools, but were unable to locate any that met our exacting standards. As a result we began to develop some small-scale tools for in-house use, and by the late 90's had developed a full-capability tool both for our own use and as a commercial product.
Our first product, RIAS, or Risk Information and Assessment System, has been used for many years in the public and private sectors. Typical areas in which RIAS has been used are space projects, nuclear submarine decommissioning, major construction projects, software development projects, drug company indemnification, major government procurement, and business continuity planning.
While RIAS is and continues to be a useful tool, our experience over the years taught us that more was needed. We found that many projects run into difficulty not because of poor management but because the scope of the project had not been clearly visualized at the start. We needed to be able to pin down and plot out ('capture') areas of uncertainty and risk and build these into the budgetary process from the beginning.
In 2007 we took a clean sheet of paper and asked ourselves 'What do you need so that you can capture uncertainty and risk when costing a project or program?' And so Mandrel was born. It has been through many iterations since then and has benefited from a lot of feedback from our clients. Mandrel is now a reliable, well-developed tool for costing projects and programs where uncertainty is a fact of life.
