The project risk plan balances the investment of the mitigation against the benefit for the project. The project team often develops an alternative method for accomplishing a project goal when a risk event has been identified that may frustrate the accomplishment of that goal. These plans are called contingency plans. The risk of a truck drivers strike may be mitigated with a contingency plan that uses a train to transport the needed equipment for the project. If a critical piece of equipment is late, the impact on the schedule can be mitigated by making changes to the schedule to accommodate a late equipment delivery.
Roof Left Unfinished for Late Equipment
On one project, the project team left a section of a roof unfinished to allow the installation of equipment after the building was done and the roof installed. The equipment was late, and the project would have been delayed if the building was not completed. The project team left a section of the roof unfinished to allow the equipment to be placed in the building with the use of a crane. The roof was then completed, and the project finished on time.
In this example, the equipment arriving on time to meet the project schedule was considered a high risk. One option was to delay the end of the project. The team developed a contingency plan to install the roof in two phases to allow the installation of the equipment, if it was late. The contingency plan was more expensive and contingency funds were placed in the budget to cover the possibility that the equipment would be late.
Contingency funds are funds set aside by the project team to address unforeseen events that cause the project costs to increase. Projects with a high-risk profile will typically have a large contingency budget. Although the amount of contingency allocated in the project budget is a function of the risks identified in the risk analysis process, contingency is typically managed as one line item in the project budget.
Some project managers allocate the contingency budget to the items in the budget that have high risk rather than developing one line item in the budget for contingencies. This approach allows the project team to track the use of contingency against the risk plan. This approach also allocates the responsibility to manage the risk budget to the managers responsible for those line items. The availability of contingency funds in the line item budget may also increase the use of contingency funds to solve problems rather than finding alternative, less costly solutions. Most project managers, especially on more complex projects, will manage contingency funds at the project level, with approval of the project manager required before contingency funds can be used.
KEY TAKEAWAYS
- Risk management is a creative process that involves identifying, evaluating, and mitigating the impact of the risk event.
- Risk management can be very formal, with defined work processes, or informal, with no defined processes or methods. Formal risk evaluation includes the use of checklists, brainstorming, and expert input. A risk breakdown structure (RBS) can follow the work breakdown structure (WBS) to identify risk by activity.
- Risk evaluation prioritizes the identified risks by the likelihood and the potential impact if the event happens.
- Risk mitigation is the development and deployment of a plan to avoid, transfer, share, and reduce project risk. Contingency planning is the development of alternative plans to respond to the occurrence of a risk event.
EXERCISES
- A risk plans eliminates or minimizes the impact of risk events.
- Risk management is a creative process that involves identifying, evaluating, and the impact of risk events.
- A process for risk assessment that is parallel to the WBS is a (three words).
- Choose a project risk that could be related to the John’s move example that is not described in the text and describe a mitigation plan for that risk. You may choose from any part of the John’s move example that has been described in previous chapters.
- If you are planning a party at your residence, list three project risks and rate each of them for their potential impact and likelihood. Use high, medium, and low.
- Describe the similarities and differences between risk transfer and risk sharing.
Risk Management
Assume that you are involved in planning a wedding. What are three risks that might affect the ceremony or reception, and how would you mitigate the impact of those risks? For example, if you are planning an outdoor wedding, describe the backup plan in case of rain.
- 1264 reads
