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Project Risk Management

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Project Risk Management

An Essential Tool For Managing And Controlling Projects

Kogan Page,

15 min read
10 take-aways
Audio & text

What's inside?

Project risk management seems as essential as blueprints and ladders, so how can your company factor it in…and fast?

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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

Corporate risk managers are professional worriers. It’s bad enough when they have to imagine everything bad that could happen to a headquarters building - and today few things are too farfetched to be dismissed. Then they must take that same existential vulnerability into the field, where hundreds or even thousands of employees are engaged in major projects using heavy equipment to build bridges, dig tunnels or lay rail lines, shooting the risk profile beyond "apoplectic" on the Murphy’s Law scale. That’s when your project risk manager should step in with an armful of charts and graphs to help return your blood pressure to safer levels. The authors, a team of risk management consultants, have written a book for anyone who is responsible for mitigating the profound risks - delays, overruns and accidents - that accompany major infrastructure projects. If you manage your company’s "anything that goes wrong department," or if you have a major project looming, getAbstract.com says read this before mistakes happen.

Summary

Risk Factors

You step out of your office for lunch and approach the curb. Before you cross the street, you look to the left and right. Then you proceed. This routine activity is actually an example of risk management. While checking for traffic doesn’t guarantee you’ll safely reach the other side of the street, it greatly improves your chances.

When applying risk management principles to an upcoming project, understand that risk management is actually something you do every day, whether by fastening your seat belt or checking the rear view mirror twice before you change lanes. Risk is part of life, and managing risk is part of a reasonable life. As you delve into the intricacies of risk management, it’s occasionally useful to return to this starting point: risk management may appear complex, but it’s actually an element of your daily routine.

Managing the risk involved in a major project, however, is an issue of an entirely different scale. Every project has risk, but human nature tends to avoid looking at risk and to focus on goals, such as completing the project. You have only one opportunity to get a project right, yet newspapers daily offer many examples ...

About the Authors

Daniella van Well-Stam specializes in infrastructure project risk management. Fianne Lindenaar has worked at the RISMAN Project Bureau since 1999. Suzanne van Kinderen is a project management consultant specializing in risk management. Bouke van den Bunt, director of the RISMAN Project Bureau since 2000, works in risk analysis and management.

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