Environmental compliance officer at Halbrook Dairies
About 75 minutes. Included in Plus.
A monthly ammonia result is above the permit limit. Decide whether the permit has actually been breached, get a notification signed before the clock runs out, and handle a report of dead fish downstream without guessing or denying.
Skills: Assess compliance against a permit's statistical limits; Separate records from what people remember; Meet a legal notification deadline under pressure; Report facts without speculating about cause; Handle a public pollution report within the rules
Security risk and compliance manager at Brackenfield Retail Group
About 80 minutes. Included in Plus.
Marketing wants a fast growing analytics vendor live before Black Friday, and it wants 1.2 million customers' names, emails and card digits. Assess the vendor's evidence, score the risk, design the controls that would make an exception acceptable, and keep the gate shut when the vendor reveals an old incident.
Skills: Assess vendor controls on evidence, not answers; Score third-party risk by a defined method; Design compensating controls that change the risk; Route a risk decision to the right approver; Hold a security gate under commercial pressure
Data analyst at Kibble and Co
About 70 minutes. Included in Plus.
The dashboard says repeat purchases have halved since June and marketing wants 50,000 pounds to win customers back. Check what the number measures, find out what changed in June and what is incomplete, and tell the board what the data really says before it spends the money.
Skills: Check what a measure means before trusting its trend; Separate a mix effect and incomplete periods from real change; Combine rates correctly from counts; Write a board note that leads with the answer; Disagree with a colleague's figures constructively
Release captain (senior software engineer) at Orla Books
About 80 minutes. Included in Plus.
Release 5.4 must get a new bank feed connector live before an aggregator switches off its old interface on 31 October, but Android crashes, a slow migration and a quarantined test stand in the way. Judge readiness, recommend a plan and roll it out without over-promising.
Skills: Judge release readiness against written criteria and evidence; Separate what a dashboard shows from what the policy counts; Recommend a release plan that protects a hard external deadline; Ask for only the exceptions the policy allows, with reasons; Plan a staged rollout and the communications that depend on it
Front office duty supervisor at Calder Quay Hotel
About 55 minutes. Included in Plus.
The hotel is sold out and a room has just flooded. Work out the room position, decide who to move to another hotel and on what terms, and handle the night when it changes again.
Skills: Work out a hotel's room position from live records; Apply a walk procedure fairly and within a spending limit; Write to a displaced guest clearly and honestly; Hand over an evening's decisions so the morning can act
Tax assistant at Pembrey and Lowe Accountants
About 55 minutes. Included in Plus.
A photographer has sent a year of spending with her own notes on what counts as business. Sort each item under the firm's expenses guide, ask her the right questions, and hold the rules kindly when she pushes for a holiday and cash wages to count.
Skills: Classify expenses as allowable, mixed use, capital or not allowable; Apply the mileage rule without double counting; Ask a client clear questions for missing evidence; Explain a rule to a client who disagrees
Learning and development coordinator at Corran Foods
About 70 minutes. Included in Plus.
Fourteen training requests and a budget that covers about half. Allocate it by the policy, check the compliance dates yourself, say no to a director's favourite course with a real alternative, and re-plan when Finance cuts the budget.
Skills: Allocate a budget by a published order of priority; Check requests against records before funding; Say no to a senior manager with a real alternative; Re-plan quickly when the budget changes
Management consultant at Larkspur Partners
About 85 minutes. Included in Plus.
A client's finance director has told his board that closing a depot will save 3.04 million pounds a year. Rebuild the savings from the client's own data, tell the steering committee the true number in a deck, and correct it again when a depot manager's figure turns out to be wrong.
Skills: Separate costs that end from costs that move; Build a savings and payback model from client data; Present an unwelcome number answer first; Handle a client sponsor's expectations with evidence; Revise analysis openly when data changes