"Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood.
Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less"
- Marie Curie

Over the past 2 years, we have grown and empowered a robust Project Management Office specifically tasked with managing the risks involved in our projects.  All UK government funded projects require robust and regularly reviewed risk registers, and the management of risk involves the majority of the technical team.  We follow the RAID process, where we identify as far as possible all Risks, Assumptions, Issues and Dependencies at a project and program level.

Risks are captured when the matter is something within our control or where we can actively mitigate the impact.  Risks are scored with both a probability and an impact, with high scoring risks receiving the most attention. Assumptions are made where we do not have enough information to assess a risk, or where we cannot actively mitigate the impact.  Some assumptions are listed at the end of this section. Risks and assumptions can transform into issues, or new issues may arise and these issues are managed to mitigate or eliminate the impact.  Dependencies map critical paths within projects and programmes, at a higher level.

In the last 12 months we have implemented a matrix approach, so that each project or workstream has a technical lead and a project manager, jointly responsible for delivering the technical project and reporting at least quarterly on progress.  We provide informal training and mentoring for new tech leads and we are actively training the project managers in professional project disciplines.

As a management team, we seek to identify, manage and where possible mitigate the higher order risks, and the following descriptions seek to call out the top risks posed by the Series A plans.  This list is not comprehensive or excessively detailed, although @Sam Funnell will happily go there if you let her, but seeks to provide the context for the stuff that keeps us up a night.  Specific risks and mitigations are part of the Corporate Risk Register, which is periodically reviewed along with the Risk Policy and Risk Appetite documents.

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Talent and Skills

A significant part of the collateral provided is directed to the culture and team we have built here at Nu Quantum.  There remains no doubt that hiring and retaining the right talent, with the necessary skills, expertises and ability to adapt will remain a significant challenge.  The field of quantum networking is relatively new, meaning that many of the staff are in the early stages of their careers.  The cross-disciplinary nature of the technical problem we need to solve means that many team members need to up-skill or cross-skill quite rapidly to keep paces with the technical challenges.  Team members from academic or experimental backgrounds are expected to adopt more professional product development skills, along with the appropriate approaches to H&S and lab management. The EMT regularly reviews, both formally and informally, the People strategy and seeks to mitigate risks in:

• Talent acquisition and time to hire, especially for rare or small talent pools;
• Onboarding and up-skilling/cross-skilling;
• Expected technical standards, Design for Test (DfT), Design for Manufacturing (DfM), Design Reviews.

More information on the People strategy can be found in the People section.

Quantum Networks Engineering is still in its infancy, given the low number of companies in the space. As the pioneer in quantum networking, at Nu Quantum we seek to turn the risk around Talent and Skill into part of our moat by ‘setting the curriculum’ on quantum networks engineering. This includes the development of internal documentation, mentoring programs and collaboration with academic partners.

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Facilities and Supply Chain

Finding spaces suitable to accommodate appropriate lab and office space, in and around the West Cambridge and Harwell sites is challenging.  Lab space in particular requires a complex and long fit-out process and requires significant investment well in advance of anticipated need.  We have had a number of issues in our current facilities which the team have managed well in the circumstances.  The current building stock available locally in both locations is both aging and not designed to the relevant modern standards.  We remain close to both landlords and are actively scouting informally for new locations.  However, the current facilities do pose some challenges to the anticipated work programs which will require creative approaches to resolve.

One project, the IDRA project, currently relies on the Customer to provide physical facilities, equipment and technical expertise to set up the test bed. Delays in the provisioning of this facility have impacted the project and the PMO have worked to establish mitigation plans.  Since the Customer is a UK Government entity, we can reasonably expect further challenges in access, cybersecurity and H&S requirements to continue to manifest.  One mitigation is to provision a duplicate in a Nu Quantum controlled facility, taking the learning from current project.

In addition to the challenges of finding appropriate facilities, we also face significant challenges in the supply chain.  Many of the more complex components are custom made, some in prototype form, and we have experienced significant unexpected delays from certain suppliers.  Some items are on extremely long lead times (in excess of 12 months) which causes challenges when delays are report lated in the delivery cycle. Recently, the activity of Houthi Pirates in the Red Sea caused a significant delay in equipment arriving by sea.

Recently, a number of Governments have added explicit reference to quantum computers and their components to the Export Control regulations. Some components and equipment items are also on the Dual-Use export control list in their own right.  The Legal and Operations team are starting to actively manage inventory and equipment that has export control restrictions so subsequent supply to customers is not impacted.

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Technical Progress and Technical Debt

The technical specifications and targets that need to be met by many elements of the QC stack will require best-in-class technology and the time scales in which these targets need to be met are aggressive.  We are aiming to develop as many elements as possible in parallel, which requires significant planning and agility in managing the dependencies. Where possible, the technical team will run multiple alternative designs, process developments and experiments in parallel, but this is a challenge with a smaller team, limited facilities and limited funds.

In order to achieve the necessary fidelity required by the architecture, technical progress is needed in a number of areas:

• Cavity fabrication process;
• Control hardware speeds and software and tools availability;
• Development of cryogenic compatible solutions;
• Fibre coupling;
• Waveguide integrated SNSPDs;
• QPU-QPI integrations and multi-QPI solutions;
• Ion trap designs and cavity integration, including dielectric heating.

In some cases, projects are carrying technical debt, arising from sources such as:

• Talent acquisition delays;
• Supplier delays describe above;
• Facility related challenges and clean room contamination issues.

As would be expected, PMO are working hard to expose and re-baseline any projects that manifest any of these delays.  It is expected that the PMO team will be actively involved in planning the next round of projects, so these issues will reduce over time.

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Architecture and Longer Term Roadmap

We have made a number of assumptions in our QEC model, which has delivered a proposed DQC Architecture.  There remains a risk at this stage the assumptions made by this model are simplistic or flawed, and the results are not actually achievable with real world products and components available when needed; supply chain issues may also be a factor here.  Signal propagation losses may also adversely impact the results.

We note that the skills needed to experiment and build state of the art experiments is necessarily different from the skills needed to take such products to manufacture at scale.

Our engagement with Prof Keller of the University of Sussex continues, but there is a risk that this trap design is not viable for the longer term QPI for a ion trap.

Additionally, post series-A projects may be delayed if investment in the necessary team and facilities is not possible during the next two years.

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Assumptions

Assumptions are recorded, when identified, and regularly reviewed to check that the assumption is still holding true.  At present, we have no information that indicates that these assumptions will not hold, but should that change, the assumption will be moved to be an issue or a risk, as appropriate.

• UK Quantum Missions continue to be funded and quantum-related grants will be made available within FY25;
• We can partner with QC companies within the Series A time frame;
• Laser Supply Chain is able to scale to meet post-series-A timescales;
• Facilities come on the market and can be acquired within a reasonable timeframe;
• Export control regime remains substantially the same;
• Immigration and visa requirements will remain substantially the same;
• IP and patent issues can be managed commercially.

We also have some technical assumptions that are part of our planning:

• We are able to publish peer-reviewed results demonstrating 98+% fidelity within the next 2 years;
• Such results are needed for technical credibility;
• Experimental demonstrations and prototypes can be productised within reasonable timescales.

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