FUNCTIONAL FOCUS
Expanding Our Focus in Light of COVID-19
FUNCTIONAL FOCUS
Expanding Our Focus in Light of COVID-19
Each year, KBR assesses its functional roadmap and strategy to deliver improvements over time, enhancing company efficiency and effectiveness. From time to time, however, change must happen quickly, which was exactly the case with COVID-19. In light of the global pandemic, KBR’s functional areas stepped up to adapt as the organization reimagined how to work.
Information Technology
Thanks to the hard work of KBR IT, the company continued to collaborate as a team of teams, with more than 90% of employees successfully working remotely in the spring.
Bandwidth and Network Capacity: In order for KBR to support an increase in remote traffic, the IT team expedited bandwidth improvements to the KBR network and Pulse virtual private network, expanded Skype servers, deployed new Citrix high-definition user experience capabilities for remote desktop and applications access, and created additional Cisco AnyConnect capacity. Their efforts enabled us to expand network capacity at offices both domestically and globally. Hardware and Software Requests: In March 2020, IT answered more than 5,000 requests for hardware items, coordinated the distribution and replacement of more than 2,350 RSA tokens, maintained a one-day turnaround for requests, and fast-tracked the Microsoft Teams rollout.
Health, Safety, Security and Environment (HSSE)
With all the change around us and so much going on in the news, it can be easy to lose sight of what makes Zero Harm achievable. However, KBR has achieved it and continues to do so even in times of great distraction.
Zero Harm
KBR recently marked its fourth time achieving Zero Harm globally throughout the organization. The company first celebrated this feat in February 2018, then in September 2019, again in November 2019 and most recently in April 2020.
HSSE has remained vigilant in their efforts to achieve success by:
- Working closely with executive and senior management on a frequent, consistent basis to provide updates, support and guidance on navigating returning to work and working from home with evolving guidelines from global and local health and government organizations.
- Enhancing communication protocols to better share important changes, lessons learned and guidance to employees all around the globe.
- Improving the KBR HSSE Reporting System to more efficiently capture, monitor and report the status of pandemic-related effects to employees.
- Revising and communicating Global Crisis Response Team protocols and assisting business units with implementing new initiatives, particularly those related to COVID-19.
Finance
Virtual collaboration was the key to the global finance team’s success over the past few months
Surge Teams: Earlier this year, KBR’s finance team implemented “Surge Teams” to innovate quickly. The idea is simple: use a surge of resources and talent, guided by tightly defined deadlines and deliverables, to make significant progress on critical accounting initiatives. While on the team, members are trained to develop novel solutions and aggressively make changes as needed. Initial surge projects during COVID-19 included work on talent alignment and development, updating the accounting policy manual, balance sheet integrity, and the accounting closing process.
Quarterly Close: For the first time ever, the finance team managed the year’s first quarter close while telecommuting. The team collaborated through virtual platforms, including Microsoft Teams and Skype, and introduced command and control calls to ensure updates on daily progress and to highlight issues. Despite the many challenges, the team completed all close activities as scheduled, culminating in a fruitful earnings call.
Legal
Now more than ever, KBR’s legal department is continuing to streamline legal processes, including many that will transition to automated due diligence platforms.
Anti-corruption Processes: Utilizing workflow automation software, KBR is in the process of automating the due diligence review and approval of KBR International Service Intermediaries (ISI) as defined by KBR anti-corruption procedures. The new process helps to maintain a central repository of all ISIs used by KBR projects and offices worldwide, while automating manual tasks, such as information intake, due diligence, approval and monitoring. The platform is expected to save time and will be accessible to all employees with a KBR user account.
Business Courtesy Requests: KBR’s legal professionals are working to implement an automated tracking and approval tool for business courtesy requests, which should be rolled out after the launch of the ISI process automation platform.
