Orica Sets Up AI Governance ‘Control Tower’ to Scale AI Use Across Business

Mining explosives company Orica has implemented a new AI governance system called an “AI control tower” to manage and scale artificial intelligence use across the organization. The system, built using ServiceNow and developed in collaboration with Deloitte, is designed to track AI projects, manage risk, monitor development, and measure business value from AI investments.

Orica said the control tower acts as a “single front door” for all AI-related activities in the company. It provides a centralized platform where teams can submit AI use case proposals, conduct risk assessments, monitor project progress, and track whether AI projects are delivering expected business value.

Orica’s Senior Manager of AI Portfolio and Delivery, Irene Klymenko, explained that before the control tower was introduced, the company was managing AI governance using spreadsheets and emails, which made tracking and collaboration difficult.

“Our AI risk assessments were done on spreadsheets, which were emailed to peers and stored in SharePoint folders, making it very difficult to track changes, owners, actions, mitigations, or progress,” Klymenko said during the ServiceNow AI Summit in Melbourne.

The new AI control tower serves three main functions. First, it collects and manages all AI use case proposals across the company. These proposals are then prioritized, categorized, and assessed for risk, with risk assessments stored and accessible throughout the AI project lifecycle.

Second, the platform allows the company to centrally monitor AI development activity, ensuring visibility into what different teams are building and how projects are progressing.

Third, the control tower tracks whether AI investments are actually delivering value to the business. This includes measuring performance and financial returns from AI projects.

According to Orica, AI use cases are being proposed not only by internal teams but also by external vendors, making centralized visibility increasingly important. The company said the control tower helps ensure transparency and proper governance as AI adoption grows across the organization.

Interestingly, Klymenko said employees did not resist the new governance system. Instead, many teams supported it because it helped streamline and speed up AI project approvals and development.

“AI governance isn’t meant to block you or slow you down. It’s actually the opposite. We want to move away from spreadsheets to a streamlined process that makes it faster to use AI in the workplace,” she said.

Orica has been using the AI control tower for about 18 months, but the company says there is still room for improvement. One of the main challenges is integrating the control tower with multiple hyperscale cloud platforms where some AI tools and agents are running.

Klymenko said integration across different cloud providers remains complex and will continue to be a focus area for improvement. The company is also working on improving how it measures the business value of AI, particularly using financial metrics.

The Orica AI control tower initiative reflects a growing trend in large organizations: as AI adoption increases, companies are building AI governance frameworks to manage risk, ensure compliance, track performance, and maximize return on AI investments.