Hard problems rarely respect disciplinary boundaries.
RISE provides independent technical review for complex physical-world problems that cross disciplines, challenge assumptions, and resist standard scopes. Find what your team may be missing. Decide what to do next.
When to Call RISE
RISE is built for problems that are technically real, consequential, and difficult to contain within a single discipline.
- The problem crosses disciplines, teams, or systems and no one owns the whole picture.
- A consequential decision depends on assumptions that have not been independently challenged.
- Field conditions, human behavior, or system performance may not match what the plan says should happen.
- The work involves novel technology, hazardous materials, extreme environments, or unfamiliar operating conditions where the usual playbook may not be enough.
Core Capabilities
Red-Team Review + Technical Due Diligence
Independent challenge of technical plans, assumptions, systems, and proposed decisions. RISE looks for unsupported assumptions, missing interfaces, normalized risk, and failure paths that may not be obvious from inside the team.
Site Walkdowns + Expert Interviews
Direct observation of how the work actually happens, supported by conversations with the people closest to it. RISE compares field reality with documented plans and surfaces gaps, workarounds, tacit knowledge, and conditions that may change the technical picture.
ISRU + Extreme-Environment Advisory
Independent concept review for in situ resource utilization, remote operations, closed environments, and other resource-constrained systems. RISE applies terrestrial experience in geology, material characterization, industrial hygiene, construction, and field operations to questions involving regolith, dust, worker health, closed-loop materials, and technologies intended for use beyond Earth.
ISRU Advisory
RISE's off-world advisory work grows directly from terrestrial experience with subsurface investigation, drilling, material characterization, exposure control, construction, and field operations.
The environment changes. The core questions do not:
What is below us? How do we reach it? What do we bring back up? What becomes waste, hazard, or resource? How do we keep people and systems functioning while we do it?
Terrestrial Experience
- Geology & subsurface characterization
- Direct-push drilling, augering & subsurface investigation
- Excavated soil, cuttings & stockpile characterization
- Contaminated media & material segregation
- Industrial hygiene & exposure assessment
- Construction, field operations & worker protection
Off-World Application
- Regolith & subsurface characterization
- Excavation, drilling & material-recovery concepts
- Dust generation, transport, exposure & control
- Closed-loop material & waste-to-resource systems
- Remote & autonomous field operations
- Worker health in closed and resource-constrained environments
How RISE Works
Define the Real Problem
Start with the decision, pain point, unexplained condition, or opportunity. Clarify what needs to be known, what depends on the answer, and what would make the review useful.
Build the Picture
Review the agreed documents and data, talk with the people closest to the system, and go to the site when physical context matters.
Examine the Whole System
Trace assumptions, materials, decisions, interfaces, field conditions, and human work across disciplines. Look for where documented intent and operational reality diverge.
Return the Next Useful Answer
Make a decision, identify the next test, challenge an assumption, understand a failure, choose a path, or something else entirely.
About Kimberly Kim, CIH, CSP, PG
Founder & Principal
Kim Kim is a published volcanologist and planetary geoscientist with two decades of applied experience across geology, environmental consulting, industrial hygiene, construction, drilling, and field operations.
Her work has ranged from terrestrial explosive volcanology and Martian surface processes to contaminated-site investigation, subsurface characterization, worker exposure, construction oversight, and complex field programs.
Led complex field programs involving inexperienced crews, contractors, regulators, equipment delays, hazardous materials, heat stress, and evolving site conditions—keeping the technical work, worker protection, and project objectives moving together.
She founded RISE around a simple premise: the hardest technical problems rarely stay inside one discipline. The most useful answers often come from understanding how the geology, equipment, people, procedures, environment, and assumptions interact as one system.
Based in Knoxville, Tennessee. Available for remote advisory work and domestic or international site engagements.
Who RISE Works With
RISE works with teams building, operating, investigating, or adapting complex physical systems, especially when the problem crosses conventional technical boundaries.
Bring RISE your hardest problem.
You do not need to know what kind of service you need. Start with the problem, the decision, or the thing that does not quite make sense yet.