Clouds of Vagueness
Andy Garlick
Risking NEC3
I’m getting slightly obsessed with NEC3. As I’ve posted before, here and elsewhere, these forms of contract are intended to promote good practice in project management but, as far as risk is concerned, do not lay out very clearly what is intended. This is reinforced by what I see in my travels which is a […]
We’re not extinct yet
I was encouraged by Matthew Leitch’s taxonomy of bad behaviour to drag up a list of bad arguments I pulled together for a book that didn’t get published some time ago. I thought it might contribute to the risk culture debate. The abortive book was on climate risk and now I look back I see that the discussion was unsurprisingly climate-focussed. […]
More for your money
I promised to review the Infrastructure Risk Group report on Managing Cost Risk & Uncertainty In Infrastructure Projects, a report which was launched last month at the ICE with the sponsorship of the IRM. The report is a result of work undertaken as part of the Infrastructure UK investigation of the high cost of infrastructure projects. […]
Risk appetite – the official definition
Earlier this week I attended a grand occasion – the launch of the Infrastructure Risk Group’s report on Managing Cost and Uncertainty in Infrastructure Projects. This was held at the Institution of Civil Engineers, sponsored by the IRM, and the endorsements were provided by Andrew Wolstenholme, boss of Crossrail, Lord Deighton, the Treasury Commercial Secretary […]
Risk in NEC3
I’ve been doing some much-needed professional development by finally getting properly up to speed on NEC3. This is what was formerly known as the New Engineering Contract – like BAA the letters don’t stand for anything anymore – which was designed to simplify the way construction projects were commissioned and managed. NEC3 is the most […]
What you’ve been waiting for
Matthew Leitch asked me to summarise my last two posts about risk definitions. I said it would take 5 minutes, but as I scoped it out I realised that a lot was involved to provide a proper explanation. Eventually I developed Prezi presentation with a voiceover to cover the explanations. It’s very boring so I’m […]
The ‘too difficult’ style
I was brought up short the other day while reading, of all things, the Cambridge alumni rag, Cam. It was an article by Michael Hurley, a lecturer in English, on how literary language can sometimes communicate better than plain English. His closing sentence is, “straight talk can be a prophylactic against mendacious or muddled thought, but […]
Pedant’s Corner (2)
This is the second post on risk definitions in the context of risk management standards. Here we are moving on to risk governance, the outer level of the three risk management processes I proposed some time ago. In that previous work I suggested there should be three main components of a risk policy, the document […]
Pedant’s Corner (1)
In principle I’m a great fan of standards for risk management. Given the problems we have, there is a very attractive idea that conceptually lucid, clearly written standards can help us find the way forward. In reality the large range of standards (ISO 31000, BS 31100, superseded A/NZ documents, etc) and quasi standards (PRAM, MoR/P3M3, […]
Resilience (Part 2): aircraft carriers on the lawn
In the previous article I explored resilience in the way it is described in the WEF global risk report. It was hard to find much that distinguished it from a conventional risk management approach – listing actions against risks – apart from: a recognition that things look different at different scales – the global uncertainty […]
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