Risk Management in Engineering and Construction: Tools and Techniques

Today’s businesses are driven by customer ‘pull’ and technological ‘push’. To remain competitive in this dynamic business world, engineering and construction organizations are constantly innovating with new technology tools and techniques to improve process performance in their projects. Their management challenge is to save time, reduce cost and increase quality and operational efficiency. Risk management has recently evolved as an effective method of managing both projects and operations. Risk is inherent in any project, as managers need to plan projects with minimal knowledge and information, but its management helps managers to become proactive rather than reactive. Hence, it not only increases the chance of project achievement, but also helps ensure better performance throughout its operations phase.

Various qualitative and quantitative tools are researched extensively by academics and routinely deployed by practitioners for managing risk. These have tremendous potential for wider applications. Yet the current literature on both the theory and practice of risk management is widely scattered. Most of the books emphasize risk management theory but lack practical demonstrations and give little guidance on the application of those theories. This book showcases a number of effective applications of risk management tools and techniques across product and service life in a way useful for practitioners, graduate students and researchers. It also provides an in-depth understanding of the principles of risk management in engineering and construction.

Stephen O. Ogunlana is currently the Chair of Construction Project Management at the School of Energy, Geoscience, Infrastructure and Society at Heriot-Watt University, Scotland. He has an international reputation for research in the application of system dynamics to construction projects and organizations. He is the author of over 200 scholarly publications in journals and conferences. His research has been funded by several governments. His works on leadership were awarded Emerald Literati Award for two consecutive years for the most outstanding paper in the Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management journal. He has a continuing interest in technology innovation for project management and in public-private partnerships for infrastructure delivery.

Prasanta Kumar Dey is a Professor of Operations Management at Aston Business School. He has been honoured as 50th Anniversary Chair of Aston University in 2017. Prior to joining Aston University in 2004, he worked for five years at the University of the West Indies in Barbados and for 14 years at Indian Oil Corporation Limited. He specializes in supply chain management and project management, and circular economy. He has published more than 150 research papers in leading international refereed journals. He has accomplished several impactful interdisciplinary research projects on a sustainable supply chain of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), which were funded by leading bodies such as the Research Council UK, British Council, Royal Society, Royal Academy of Engineering, EU Horizon 2020 and ERDF. He is the founder editor-in-chief of the International Journal of Energy Sector Management.