Managing Project Risks

A comprehensive overview of project risk management, providing guidance on implementing and improving project risk management systems in organizations

This book provides a comprehensive overview of project risk management. Besides offering an easy-to-follow, yet systematic approach to project risk management, it also introduces topics which have an important bearing on how risks are managed but which are generally not found in other books, including risk knowledge management, cultural risk-shaping, project complexity, political risks, and strategic risk management. Many new concepts about risk management are introduced. Diagrams and tables, together with project examples and case studies, illustrate the authors’ precepts and ideas.

Each chapter in Managing Project Risks begins with an introduction to its topic and ends with a summary. The book starts by providing an understanding and overview of risk and continues with coverage of projects and project stakeholders. Ensuing chapters look at project risk management processes, contexts and risk drivers, identification, assessment and evaluation, response and treatment options, and risk monitoring and control. One chapter focuses entirely on risk knowledge management. Others explore the cultural shaping of risk, political risk in projects, computer applications, and more. The book finishes by examining the current state and potential future of project risk management.

In essence, this book: 

• Effectively communicates a conceptual and philosophical understanding of risk
• Establishes the nature of projects and the stakeholders involved in them
• Presents a systematic and logically progressive approach to the processes of project risk management
• Demonstrates how to recognize the drivers of project risks and the factors which shape them
• Emphasizes the importance of capturing and exploiting project risk knowledge
• Provides guidance about implementing and building (or improving) project risk management systems in organizations

Managing Project Risks will benefit practitioners and students of project management across a wide range of industries and professions. 

PETER J EDWARDS, PHD, is an Adjunct Professor at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. He has authored and co-authored more than 150 peer-reviewed journal and conference papers, two books, and five book chapter contributions.

PAULO VAZ SERRA, PHD, is a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne, Australia, with more than 20 years of experience working in the construction industry in Europe. He coordinates the "Risk in Construction" and other courses within a Master of Construction Management degree program.

MICHAEL EDWARDS, B.SC., has worked for the Australian Commonwealth Government for over 20 years initiating and managing projects for services and service improvements.