Construction Project Risk Management: Challenges and Mitigation

This report examines the critical aspects of risk management within construction projects, focusing on the challenges faced by project managers. The report begins with an introduction to project management stages, emphasizing the importance of risk management in ensuring project success. It identifies improper risk management as a significant challenge, illustrating its potential impact through a real-world scenario where inadequate risk assessment led to unforeseen financial constraints and project setbacks. The report then delves into effective risk management strategies, including the identification of hazards, thorough risk assessments, and the maintenance of risk logs. It highlights the importance of gathering diverse inputs, fostering trust among team members, and conducting risk assessments in a structured manner. The report also references the construction risk management process and concludes by summarizing the various challenges project managers face, including productivity, substance abuse, and scheduling pressures, while reiterating the significance of addressing and mitigating identified risks.

Running head: CONSTRUCTION
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Name of Student
Name of University
Author’s Note

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Introduction
Project management usually consists of numerous stages, these stages include
initiation, planning, executing, performance monitoring and closure. Every project has similar
stages including project that are executed in the field of construction industry. Project
manager starts to create as well as evaluate a particular business case for determining the
feasibility of the project. Along with stakeholder, a particular project charter or a project
initiation document is also created. This assignment presents regarding an issue faced by
project managers in a construction project, it further presents the mitigation factor of the
issue.
Body
The challenge faced by a project manager that has been chosen for this particular
assignment includes improper risk management, this issue has vulnerable impacts on the
entire project. Risk tolerance is considered as a part of the makeup of a project manager. risk
management is usually designed by the project manager for the purpose of planning,
monitoring as well as controlling the measured that are required in order to prevent exposure
of the project to risks.
Improper risk management could lead to failure of a particular project as well. I
would like to share a particular scenario where I had been a part of the construction project
and I had faced various issues with the project due to improper risk management. The project
manager had hired a particular risk manager, the manager did not have much experience in
managing risk, he identified some major risks that could be faced by our project but he did
not identify the risks that might result due to the mitigation of initial risks. Out project had
been facing risk in the designing of that specific project, we were provided with various
strategies that we could use for the purpose of mitigating the risk of poor design, we aimed in

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mitigating the risk and at last found that we had been attacked by a different new risk which
is funding risk, this risk has been faced because in the process of mitigating the initial risk,
we had used expensive strategies for it and hence the new design that had been presented
consumed 90% of the funding that had been decided in a schedule of the project. We had to
face a major loss in that particular project because due to an initial risk we had to face a new
risk which was tough to mitigate.
In order to carry out an effective risk management it is important to identify the
hazards and hence assess the overall extent of the risk, provide various measures for the
purpose of controlling the risk and hence manage the potential residual risks. Risk logs can be
maintained for the purpose of recording the risk that are faced by the project manager, the log
would also help the project manager to prioritize the risks on the basis of their impacts and
their probability within a particular project. Prioritization would also help in understanding
the risks that are important to be mitigated first. In order to avoid risk management
shortcomings, the project manager might learn to gather various inputs, develop a standard
level of trust between various team members and hence have a very good idea that parts of a
particular project is likely to veer. Risk assessments can also be carried out in a thorough as
well as controlled manner, this can be done by following a specific set of strategies. Risk
assessment for health as well as safety risks are vital requirements under management of
healthy as well as safety at the work regulations and a specific assessment includes various
steps, these steps include identifying the hazard, identifying who and what has harmed the
project, determine various control measures of risk mitigation required, evaluate the risks
along with any risks caused by the control measures, record findings of the risk assessment,
make various contingency plans for the residual risks, review as well as revision of risks and
many more.

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Figure 1: construction risk management process
(Source: Brockett, Golden & Betak, 2019)
Conclusion
From the above assignment, it could be stated that there are numerous challenges that
are faced by the project managers in the field of construction, these issues include
productivity, substance abuse, culture and communication, scheduling pressures, financial
management and many more. One among all the challenges have been chosen and discussed
in this assignment, this assignment not only presents data regarding the issue that is faced by
the construction project, it also presents the ways that could be used for the purpose of
mitigating this issue.

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Bibliography
Brockett, P. L., Golden, L. L., & Betak, J. (2019). Different Market Methods for Transferring
Financial Risks in Construction. In Risk Management in Construction Projects.
IntechOpen.
Yu, S. (2018). Managing risks on construction projects.