Rescue Index™
Your project,in contextproject like it.
The Rescue Score™ is a structured measure of project health. The Rescue Index™ adds context from the factors assessed during an engagement; it is not a benchmark against every other project.
Score vs. Index
Two different questions.
Rescue Score™
Absolute · 0–100
How healthy is this project? Measured across ten dimensions. Expressed as a number from 0 to 100. Absolute.
Rescue Index™
Relative · Percentile
How does this project compare to comparable projects? Expressed as a percentile. Relative. Context-dependent.
A project with a Rescue Score of 58 might be average for a large-scale infrastructure program in its third year. Or it might be significantly worse than comparable projects of the same type. The Rescue Index™ tells you which.
Six benchmark dimensions
What the Index compares.
Sector
Financial services, pharmaceuticals, infrastructure, retail, technology, public sector. Each sector has its own failure patterns, risk profiles, and recovery trajectories.
Technology projects fail faster. Infrastructure projects fail more expensively. Pharmaceutical projects fail with more regulatory consequence.
Project Size
Measured by budget and team size. Larger projects have more failure modes. Smaller projects have less resilience. Size changes the benchmark.
A Rescue Score of 45 on a £5m project is very different from a Rescue Score of 45 on a £500m program.
Project Phase
Initiation, planning, execution, closure. The phase determines which failure modes are most likely — and which interventions are still available.
A project in execution with a Rescue Score of 40 has fewer recovery options than a project in planning with the same score.
Region
Project failure patterns vary by geography. Regulatory environment, labor market, supply chain structure, and cultural factors all affect project risk.
Infrastructure projects in emerging markets carry different risk profiles from equivalent projects in mature markets.
Contract Model
Fixed price, time and materials, alliance, framework. The contract model determines the incentive structure — and the incentive structure determines the failure mode.
Fixed-price contracts concentrate risk on the supplier. Time-and-materials contracts concentrate risk on the client. Both create predictable failure patterns.
Complexity
Number of workstreams, number of vendors, number of stakeholder groups, degree of technical novelty. Complexity multiplies every other risk factor.
A project with ten vendors and three regulatory bodies is not ten times more complex than a single-vendor project. It is exponentially more complex.
Example Index output
What the Index tells you.
A project at the 87th percentile of risk is not simply 'at risk'. It is in the top 13% of the most dangerous projects Juliedoo has assessed in this category. That is not a warning. That is an emergency.
Risk Index™ output
This project is riskier than 87% of comparable projects.
Sector: Financial Services · Size: £50m–£200m · Phase: Execution · Region: Western Europe · Contract: Fixed Price · Complexity: High
Why benchmarking matters
Context changes the decision.
An absolute score tells you the state of your project. A relative score tells you the urgency of your response. A CEO who knows their project has a Rescue Score of 55 knows something is wrong. A CEO who knows their project is riskier than 91% of comparable projects knows they need to act today. The Rescue Index™ is the difference between knowing something is wrong and knowing how wrong it is.
Availability
The Index is an engagement deliverable.
The Rescue Index™ is calculated as part of a full Juliedoo engagement. It requires a validated Rescue Score™ and access to the Juliedoo benchmark dataset. It is not available as a standalone product or self-assessment tool.
The Rescue Index™ benchmark dataset is built from anonymised Juliedoo engagement data. No client is identifiable in the dataset.
Where does your project sit in the Index?
Start with the Project Rescue Check. A full Rescue Index™ assessment requires a Juliedoo engagement.