PRoJECT MANAGEMENT

Project Management

[Name of the Writer]

[Name of the Institution]

Project Management

Part 1

Risks have a significant impact on a construction project's performance in terms of cost, time and quality (Ahmed et al., 2007). The consequences of project risks are several times more severe in construction industries of developing countries, including the sub-Saharan region (Didibhuku and Mvubu, 2008), than in established Western construction industries. As the size and complexity of projects have increased, the ability to manage risks throughout the construction process has become one of the challenging management tasks for sub-Saharan construction contractors (Muya, 2008). The concept of project risk management that involves understanding potential problems that might occur on a project and how they might impede project success is hardly new. Equally, a number of frameworks, models and tools for managing project risks feature heavily in the literature (Tah and Carr, 2000; Baccarini and Archer, 2001; Shang et al., 2005). However, the extent to which construction contractors in the sub-Suharan region follow the series of steps of risk management process conceived from project management principles' is severely lacking in the literature. The foregoing can provide rich lessons to construction contractors practising in this region or similar regions and those who intend to ally with local construction contractors as various nations continue to liberalise their markets to international participants.

Studies have shown that there is a relatively low implementation of formal risk management methods in practice, and few of them manage to produce quantitative data that should pinpoint the exact spot areas of problems (Lyons and Skitmore, 2004). Equally, Tan and Carr (2001) pointed out that the construction industry consistently suffers from poor project performance due to the lack of a formalised risk management procedures. The need to for measuring of the series of steps for the project risk management process cannot be overemphasised in order to uncover the specific areas that give rise to risk challenges to construction contractors.

one of the characteristics that has contributed significantly to business process improvement lies in the methodology of measuring business processes, which often provides quick feedback for addressing under-performance within manufacturing organisations (Garvin, 1991). However, the construction industry is widely perceived as being slow to innovate, and has trailed many manufacturing industries in innovation of its management processes (Veshosky, 1998; Kululanga et al., 2001). Thus, the objective of measuring project risk management process is aimed at understating the current under-performance associated with uncertainties that continues to undermine construction project goals. others have pointed out that one of the means for stimulating improvements in construction organisations' capabilities in the construction industry is by encouraging the measurement of business processes (Egan, 1998). This study aims to ascertain the extent to which current risk management practices are used by construction contractors in one country in the sub-Saharan region.

Developments in project risk management

The overall goal of undertaking a risk management process audit is to maximise the opportunities and minimise the consequences of a risky event. The literature shows a number of distinctive developments to the risk management ...