The opportunity of a lifetime: the Bays Consulting supplier story
Curiosity kept Bays Consulting pondering after delivering a commission for ACE 鈥撯€痑nd the subsequent results changed the company鈥檚 prospects.
Bays Consulting, an analytics company that prides itself on using 鈥榤aths, not magic鈥� to solve data challenges, supported the Accelerated Capability Environment (ACE) on a government commission to model the way large crowds behave in an emergency.
However, after the initial commission work was complete, the Bays team felt more could be done to develop the concept 鈥� and two of them asked founder Sophie Carr for permission to spend time taking it further. The original work was covered by Crown copyright, which meant it couldn鈥檛 be reused, so they started from scratch.
A novel solution
At this time, Bays was investing internally to explore what was possible simply to satisfy the team鈥檚 curiosity, with no suggestion of external funding. But when a follow-up piece of work for the same customer was put out to tender to ACE鈥檚 expert Vivace community, Bays had an interesting solution to offer.
Dr Carr explained: 鈥淲e said, we can use your code and work on it 鈥� but what you鈥檙e investing won鈥檛 get you to where we are now, because of what we鈥檝e done ourselves. So now the money for this work is accelerating our roadmap and giving them a much, much better tool at the end of it 鈥� and it鈥檚 genuinely a partnership.鈥�
This second phase delivered a simulation tool of interest to event operators, responders, and policymakers, which has provided an increased understanding of how crowds could move in response to external stimuli.
As part of the deal, Bays kept the intellectual property (IP) for their new tool, meaning they could commercialise it, but the Home Office was given a free forever licence for use within the Home Office.
Bays鈥� new tool, says Dr Carr, 鈥渋s a 2D cellular model which is faster and more efficient to use than its ancestor.聽Maps of a given area can be uploaded, and crowd composition differentiation means groups, individuals and families are all easily identified.
鈥淭his is important because realistic modelling against different scenarios is key to increasing understanding of what mitigations and protections are needed to help keep the public safe.
鈥淭he crowd can be set by age, to mimic known footfall or density in a given area on a given day. It鈥檚 also scalable 鈥� and can be used for anything from a local cinema or high street to a major street in London.鈥�
鈥淭his model is really designed to be a risk management and crowd management tool. It can help planners to understand how their current plan could affect the outcomes of a scenario.鈥�
Dr Carr added: 鈥淭he crowd鈥檚 objective is to not get injured. So, we鈥檝e been working with a professor of psychology to make sure we capture the crowd鈥檚 responses as accurately as possible.鈥�
Validators working with Bays as part of this latest ACE work include an ex-head of crowd control and an ex-deputy commissioner from London鈥檚 Metropolitan Police.
The opportunity of a lifetime
In terms of company development, Dr Carr said, having the IP 鈥済ives us something we can push out as a product or service, something which helps us create a stable base and be known for something we鈥檙e good at鈥�.
鈥淚鈥檓 not joking when I say it鈥檚 the opportunity of a lifetime 鈥� it鈥檚 literally company-changing.鈥�
Dr Carr聽founded Bays in 2009 after she was made redundant. Winning a grant in 2021 to predict the need for independent food banks in the UK enabled her to hire the company鈥檚 first statistician. Work for the Joint Biosecurity Centre (JBC) during the pandemic followed, because they needed statisticians too, and the company started to take off.聽 Then Bays found ACE 鈥� and a whole new journey began.
Looking back over her experience with ACE so far, Dr Carr said: 鈥淭he real draw, as a small company, is that ACE offers 鈥� in a way that no other government framework we鈥檙e involved in has 鈥� the chance to work on short, sharp, quick turnaround projects and different projects.
鈥淓qually, the rainbow teaming means we鈥檝e worked with much bigger companies who we would struggle to meet and work with otherwise.
鈥淲e鈥檝e now met other companies that we bid on work with outside ACE, and we鈥檝e built up a reputation externally for some of the work we鈥檝e done internally. I don鈥檛 know any other environment that is a genuine community in the way that ACE 颈蝉.鈥�