Detailed Risk Management Report: Flinders Rail Link Project Analysis

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of the risk management strategies for the Flinders Rail Link Project, an $850 million initiative to extend the Tonsley Railway Line. It identifies key stakeholders and assesses the project's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats using SWOT analysis. The report categorizes risks related to disability access at Tonsley Station, high-density housing and transport implications, and the rail link's construction over a fault line. Qualitative and quantitative risk assessments are performed, and mitigation strategies are proposed, including disability-compliant designs, rail dampers, speed adjustments, and noise barriers. The report also outlines a risk monitoring process and assigns responsibilities to a risk management team, emphasizing continuous evaluation and proactive management to ensure project success. Desklib offers similar solved assignments and past papers for students.

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Project Risk Management
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Risk Management for the Flinders Rail Link Project
1. Executive Summary
Flinders Rail Link Project is an $850 million-project that has been rolled out in collaboration
between the Australian and the South Australian governments. The purpose of the project is to
extend the 1966-opened Tonsley Railway Line. The extension is required to run from the Finders
University to Finders Medical Center. This extension is beneficial because it will facilitate rail
transport by enhancing connectivity in the terminus. Just like any other project, the Flinders Rail
Link Project is expected to involve certain risks that, of course, require extensive identification,
analysis, and mitigation, and management.
2. Introduction and Project Context: An overview of the project (PESTEL/SWOT), Plus
identification of the stakeholders. Assumptions/scope
The main stakeholders of the Flinders Rail Link Project are the commonwealth
government of Australia and the territorial government of South Australia. A thorough analysis
of the project reveals that it has certain strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats that
influence the success of its completion. The strengths include adequate intergovernmental
collaboration and funding. The weaknesses are limited time limitation, and lack of enough
personnel to discharge all its duties. The opportunities are the accessibility to, availability, and
adoption of modern technology. However, the major threats might be the numerous risks that
might be encountered and require impeccable risk management strategies that might be lacking.
A. Identification and Qualitative Analysis of the Risks

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Flinders Rail Link is a project whose implementation will have direct impacts on many
people. The extension of the Tonsley Railway Station will have both positive and negative
impacts on the surrounding community. Among its significant benefits is that it will help in the
improvement of transport system within the city. Access to efficient and smooth transport can be
advantageous because it can enable the community to move freely and conveniently. This can in
turn help in improving the economic growth of individuals, household, the city, and country at
large because of the high chances of using the medium to swiftly move from one place to the
other. However, the construction of the project might bring certain problems because of the risks
that it might bring. Such risks can be grouped into the following categories: 1) Disability
(Tonsley Station), High Density Housing and Transport, and 2) The Rail Link runs over a Fault
Line. These are uncertainties whose occurrence might lead to many risks such as injuries, loss of
lives, time wastage, destruction of properties, and the general inconvenience of the rail users and
the surrounding community. Hence, in order to mitigate these risks, a comprehensive and well-
coordinated risk management process. This process should begin by the identification of all the
risks that might be encountered in the project.
B. Evaluation and Qualitative/Quantitative Assessment of the Risks
What follows the risk identification is the analysis process. Here, the identified risks are
synthesized and evaluated using a standard assessment process. In this regard, to generate the
fine details of the above identified risks, they should be analyzed using the qualitative and
quantitative assessment process. This should be done as follows:
Disability (Tonsley Station), High Density Housing and Transport

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The process should begin by the identification of the root cause of the risk. From the
analysis conducted, it has been identified that the root cause of this risk is the poor design
of the rail that does not support the disabled, but expose and make them vulnerable to
risks. The new railway line extension is expected to be used by everyone in the country
including the disabled and non-disabled individuals. Each of these people require the rail
transport services because they need to move from one place to other to do a number of activities
such as going to jobs, businesses, or other personal engagements. Apart from availing transport
services to the users, the project will contribute to the emergence of high density housing system
in the city. All these can bring some risks that might interfere with the residents in many ways.
The disabled might encounter a risk of exclusivity and lack of accessibility to the
transport services. The design and structure of the trains’ rail lines might not favor the disabled
who require special support such as the usage of wheel chairs and wheelchair-enabled access
points. Besides, there might be a problem of accidents involving the disabled members of e
society. Apart from this, the high density system might lead to the risks such as air pollution,
accidents, traffic delay, and noise pollution. Such risks can be disastrous to the individual rail
users and the members of the public who use and live around the rail way line. Risk analysis is
important because it provides a comprehensive synthesis of the risk in terms of the probability of
occurrence, severity, and the magnitude of the impacts. The magnitude of the occurrence and
impacts of these risks is illustrated in the risk matrix below:
RISK
INDEX
RISK LIKELIHOOD OF
OCCURRENCE
IMPACT
01. Inaccessibility of the High Medium

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Disabled
02. Accident Medium Extreme
03. Falls and Injuries High Medium
04. Pollution High Extreme
The Rail Link runs over a Fault Line
The root cause of this risk is the construction of the rail line in a faulty and risky
area that exposes the users to lots of uncertainties. The construction of the rail in such a
faulty line is dangerous because it can adversely affect the users. This is the root cause of
the real problem. The railway line has been established to be passing through a fault line. This
means that there is a section of the land that accommodates the line, but is not safe at all. Being
faulty is not desirable because it might compromise the safety of the trains, transported goods,
and passengers a great deal. The faultiness of the line can also be dangerous for the crew, rail
workers, and the local community who live around the railway line. This is a dangerous situation
that might bring a number of risks.
First, it might cause earthquakes. The faultiness of these areas can make them vulnerable
to the eruption of earthquake or tremors whose occurrence might be so disastrous. Apart from
causing injuries, such disasters might contribute to the destruction of trains, transported
commodities, and loss of lives. The other risk that might occur is the electric faults. The
faultiness of the railway line might render them vulnerable to electric problems whose impacts
might be disastrous to the users and nearby community. Last, but not least, there may be a risk of
accidents. Accidents can adversely affect the city because they not only cause losses, but might

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be responsible for injuries and deaths. The magnitude of the occurrence and impacts of these
risks is illustrated in the risk matrix below:
RISK
INDEX
RISK LIKELIHOOD OF
OCCURRENCE
IMPACT
01. Earthquake Medium Extreme
02. Electric Fault Medium Extreme
03. Accident and Collisions High Extreme
04. Noise Pollution High Extreme
05. Air Pollution High Extreme
C. Risk Mitigation and Treatment Plan, Cost /Benefit
All the identified risks should be mitigated because their occurrence might be disastrous and
negatively impact on many stakeholders including the local residents, rail transport workers, and
the users as well. The risks might also interfere with the effective implementation of the project
alongside its overall success. In this regard, it should be upon the project team to come up with
appropriate strategies to mitigate the risks.
In the risk plan, the team should ensure that it prevents the problem of inaccessibility of the
disabled users by constructing the trains and terminus using the most appropriate and
recommended designs. Meaning, the project should be disability compliant. When the
recommended designs are used, the project will not disadvantage the disabled persons at the
expense of the rest of the non-disabled users. However, to mitigate the risks of accidents,
injuries, deaths, and property destructions, the team should install and equip the rail line with
state-of-the-art and fully-functional rail dampers and speed adjustments. The mounting these
gadgets can be of great help in the mitigation of the risks that are likely to be faced by the rail
users (An, Qin, Jia & Chen 2016). Nonetheless, to mitigate the risk of noise pollution, the team

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should equip the rail line with noise barriers and erect individual noise treatments. The
construction of the 1.6 meter-long barriers with a total surface area of 12kg/m2 is commendable
because it can be effective in curtailing the spread of noise that might interfere with the health of
the rail users and the surrounding community. The benefit of the mitigation is not only about the
reduction or eradication of the negative impacts of the risk, but also about the reduction of the
projects costs. Prevention is better than the treatment of the risk-related accidents because it
eliminate any unnecessary liabilities.
D. Risk Monitoring and Allocation of Responsibilities and Roles
Risk management is a tedious and lengthy process that involves many activities. Apart from
the identification, quantification, and mitigation of the risks, they should be properly managed by
assessing and constantly evaluating the entire process. Once a mitigation strategy is identified, it
should be implemented in the right way possible. The success of the mitigation depends on the
effectiveness of the monitoring process. Monitoring should be a continuous process that is
constantly done throughout the project period.
The overall activities of the risk management process should be handled by a risk
management team that comprises of the Project Risk Manager, project manager, risk analysts,
risk consultants, risk supervisors, and quality assurance officer. Each of these personnel should
be assigned specific roles to execute during the entire process of risk planning, mitigation, and
evaluation process. For example, the risk analyst should be assigned the duty of studying the
project to identify all he risks and carry out a thorough and objective analysis of each risk
(Macciotta, Martin, Cruden, Hendry & Edwards 2017). The risk consultant, on the other hand,

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should be responsible for the provision of expertise guidance and support to the team. All these
activities should be under the overall supervision of the project risk manager.

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References
An, M., Qin, Y., Jia, L.M. & Chen, Y., 2016. Aggregation of group fuzzy risk information in the
railway risk decision making process. Safety science, 82, pp.18-28.
Macciotta, R., Martin, C.D., Cruden, D.M., Hendry, M. & Edwards, T., 2017. Rock fall hazard
control along a section of railway based on quantified risk. Georisk: Assessment and
Management of Risk for Engineered Systems and Geohazards, 11(3), pp.272-284.