Managing Project Risks

A comprehensive and highly practical overview of project risk management emphasising pragmatic solutions and user-friendly methods without advanced mathematical techniques

Managing Project Risks provides a comprehensive treatment of project risk management, offering a systematic but easy-to-follow approach. This book explores critical topics that influence how risks are managed, but which are rarely found in other books, including risk knowledge management, cultural risk-shaping, project complexity, political risks, and strategic risk management.

The book commences with foundational concepts, providing an overview of risk, project definitions, project stakeholders, and risk management systems. Subsequent chapters explore the core processes of project risk management, including risk identification, analysis, evaluation, response strategies, and risk monitoring and control. Additional topics include risk knowledge management, the influence of culture on risk, political risks in projects, and relevant software applications. Experienced readers may choose to navigate directly to the later chapters, which focus on strategic risk management and offer recommendations for planning, building, and maturing a project risk management system.

Throughout, the authors impart a practical approach that does not rely on high level expertise or advanced mathematical techniques; the emphasis remains on pragmatic solutions, user-friendly techniques, and reliable communication, enabling readers to seamlessly integrate theory into practice.

Updates to the newly revised Second Edition of Managing Project Risks include:

• Additional tools and techniques for risk identification and an expanded treatment of risk communication
• A new tool for early-stage project complexity assessment―the stage where uncertainties, and thus threat and opportunity risks, are at their highest level
• A more substantial treatment of planning for crisis response and disaster recovery, taking into consideration climate change and the increasingly prevalent impacts of severe weather phenomena
• More information on strategic risk management, now including public and organizational policy development with respect to risks in projects

Managing Project Risks is an essential resource for practitioners of project management across architecture, construction, engineering, and technology disciplines, for undergraduate and postgraduate students, and for public and private sector stakeholders involved in decision-making and policy development. It is useful wherever project-driven activities are undertaken.

Peter J. Edwards, PhD, is an Emeritus Professor at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia and continues to be active in research and writing in his retirement.

Paulo Vaz Serra, PhD, is a civil engineer with more than 20 years of experience in the construction industry, public and private, and operational research and development in Europe. He is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Michael Edwards, BSc, has more than 20 years of experience initiating and managing projects in a large department of the Australian federal government.