Personal Risk Attitudes in Postgraduate Risk Management Education

AUBEA 2017: Australasian Universities Build- ing Education Association Conference 2017, 2017

Risk management is important for contemporary construction organisations and is a vital constituent of project management education. Before learning about the processes of systematic risk management, construction and project management students need to better understand risk concepts and their own attitudes towards risk. Risk is a psychosocial construct experienced and perceived by individuals. In the Risk in Construction subject offered in the Master of Construction Management programme at the University of Melbourne, students were first invited to respond to a simple questionnaire that measured their own risk attitudes from a task, team and individual risk perspective. This self-knowledge discovery was then applied in their subsequent individual and group assignment work for the subject. The risk profiles were also used in a novel approach to assignment group formation. Students valued the opportunity to explore the alignment between formal project risk management and their own risk attitudes, and used their newly-found understanding in other management-related subjects. Future research will explore cultural and gender influences in these student journeys of self-understanding.

eKNOW 2013 : The Fifth International Conference on Information, Process, and Knowledge Management

The management of risk is a key element of all mainstream project management methodologies. It has implications for the effectiveness of the project management process itself, and for the management and communication of knowledge that is an inherent part of that process. There are two main schools of thought regarding project risk management – ‘risk as an objective fact’ and ‘risk as a subjective construct’. The former considers risk as epistemologically probabilistic, whilst risk in the subjective construct perspective allows multiple epistemological dimensions of risk. Here we review how 'risk as a subjective construct' features in existing risk management literature, and how these contributions can be classified or grouped together. The role of risk registers is then reviewed to determine whether this has any relationship with the 'risk as a subjective construct' concept. The paper then reflects upon the authors’ future research programme and the possible implications for project management practice.

2011

Risk management is a concept which becomes very popular in a number of businesses. Many companies often establish a risk management procedure in their projects for improving the performance and increase the profits. Projects undertaken in the construction sector are widely complex and have often significant budgets, and thus reducing risks associated should be a priority for each project manager. This master thesis presents an application of risk management in the early stage of a project life cycle of a construction project. In order to examine how risk and risk management process is perceived a case study of a school project was chosen. Moreover, based on the conducted interviews, the research presents how risks change during a project life cycle. All analyses are based on a theoretical background regarding risk, risk management process and project life cycle approach in the construction sector.

2020

Risk management is one of the important areas for implementation of any project and more precisely in the education sector. The conceptual research on risk management in projects within education sector is one of the key focus areas, which helps in identifying the circumstances leading to actualization. The outcomes that can arise while establishing a risk management framework in education projects can reduce the chances of effective reduction of risks. This requires a leading approach like categorization of risks to implement the same. Furthermore, in the perspective of modern educational risk management, rationality leading to risks formulates the effective risk handling process in a methodical and organizational condition. The outcome of risk management can favour the creation of effective and efficient risk management models along with strategies in the sphere of education. The present research study focuses on helping the educational employees into designing, planning, implemen...

International Journal of Construction Management, 2018

This study analyses the practical application of risk management tools by project managers in their construction projects. Using a grounded theory approach we applied purposive sampling to select 25 Australian construction project managers to identify tools utilised to analyse risk and tool preferences. Themes were developed though analysis of the in-depth interviews using QSR-NVivo11. The results indicate that the most common methods are within the look-up and supporting methods categories, followed by the evaluation and scenario methods. There is poor utilisation of statistical methods, due to the uniqueness of projects, the lack of data and time pressure on projects. The results were consistent across project managers; irrespective of project size, type of organisation or experience. However, more experienced project managers rely less on evaluation tools. The research provides evidence that many of the tools promoted by the risk standards/associations do not seem to reflect current project manager practice. The implication is that more effort should be given to appreciating the risk tools that are appropriate for projects and the importance of transferring and spreading experience among PMs.

DS 117: Proceedings of the 24th International Conference on Engineering and Product Design Education (E&PDE 2022), London South Bank University in London, UK. 8th - 9th September 2022, 2022

Collaboration is an important aspect of design, supporting ideation and the ability to tackle greater challenges. Teamwork supports the delivery of project goals across academic and professional fields. It has long been suggested that risk plays a defining factor in collaboration. Through analysis of the literature, few papers reported on the perception that students share risk when they collaborate in teams. This research project aimed to investigate if examples of shared risk can be identified in an educational environment? and how might these risks be perceived by students involved in collaborative projects? To fill this knowledge gap, a survey was conducted to collect the opinions of 44 students within the Department of Design, Manufacturing and Engineering Management, University of Strathclyde. This will build an understanding of the design student experience and identify if these students acknowledge they share risk when collaborating within a team. The cohort of students identified that risk is a defining factor among collaborative design within an educational setting. Students identify that teamwork is essential to provide a real-world comparable experience to industry, yet, has an impact on their educational experience and achievement. Recommendations are made to limit the impact of risk on student collaborative projects within an educational environment. The reduction of risk has the potential to improve teamwork aspects including fairer workload distribution.

Managing Project Risks for Competitive Advantage in Changing Business Environments

During the last years, the development of the project risk management competencies became a ubiquitous objective for education and training in project management due to the increasing constraints which companies face on the implementation of their projects. Alignment to the professional standards and usage of innovative methods in designing and delivery of instruction represent common requirements that education and training providers should consider and fulfill. The authors examine the main challenges in addressing project risk management subject in the education programmes and identify how these challenges could be dealt by using curriculum management systems. In order to implement the identified improvements, the authors propose an innovative architecture for a curriculum management system, which can be adopted by those universities interested in developing competencies-based programmes in project management. Some preliminary results are presented and discussed.

Journal of Civil Engineering and Management, 2017

The effective management of risk is critical for construction projects. However, research findings show that risk management is either not used or done ineffectively in domestic construction projects. One of the primary reasons for this appears to be the lack of risk management (RM) capabilities and knowledge. A study aimed at developing a system for supporting the effective use of RM is presented. The system has been designed so as to provide the required functionality to assist owners and contractors to develop their capabilities to manage risk effectively, including: a) to assess the existing RM organizational maturity and to report on the existing gaps, b) to propose recommendations for improving the organizational RM capabilities in the light of the detected gaps, and c) to help companies with the im­plementation and improvement of RM within the organization. The system prototype has been successfully applied in several companies that served as initial case studies. It is antic...

International journal of project management, 2004

This paper provides the results of a survey of senior management involved in the Queensland engineering construction industry, concerning the usage of risk management techniques. These are described in comparison with four earlier surveys conducted around the world and indicate that: the use of risk management is moderate to high, with very little differences between the types, sizes and risk tolerance of the organisations, and experience and risk tolerance of the individual respondents; risk management usage in the execution and planning stages of the project life cycle is higher than in the conceptual or termination phases; risk identification and risk assessment are the most often used risk management elements ahead of risk response and risk documentation; brainstorming is the most common risk identification technique used; qualitative methods of risk assessment are used most frequently; risk reduction is the most frequently used risk response method, with the use of contingencies and contractual transfer preferred over insurance; and project teams are the most frequent group used for risk analysis, ahead of in-house specialists and consultants.

Communications - Scientific letters of the University of Zilina, 2011

The term risk is often elusive, because its interpretation is commonly based on the specific aspect and goal of its utilization. Therefore, there are many definitions and approaches to cover this term. However, the situations in which we perceive risk have certain common elements. The first one is that we do not know what will happen. The second one is that specific interests are exposed to consequences in such situations [1]. Thus, there are essentially two components needed for risk to exist – an uncertain event and its adverse consequences (see Fig. 1). Risk can be defined as an uncertain event that, should it occur, will have an effect on the achievement of objectives. A risk is measured by a combination of the probability of a perceived threat and the magnitude of its consequences on objectives [11].