Listing

risk registers

This tag is associated with 13 posts

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 […]

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 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 […]

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 In reality the large range of standards (ISO 31000, BS 31100, superseded A/NZ documents, etc) and quasi standards (PRAM, MoR/P3M3, […]

We need to talk

I’m getting sidetracked trying to write an article on resilience.  One of the hares I’ve chased is Robert Kaplan’s and Anette Mikes’ discussion of three types of risk.  This is because it is asserted by the World Economic Forum’s risk report to recommend resilience as the correct approach to long-term global risks.  Turns out it […]

Proud to be a war quant

I’ve just re-read Douglas W Hubbard’s The Failure of Risk Management.  It’s an odd book in that while I agree with most of what’s in it, I’m not particularly convinced by the overall story suggested by the subtitle: Why It’s Broken and How to Fix It. Hubbard’s theme is that we do not do enough, […]

Fragility management

I reviewed Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s book Antifragility with the promise to look separately at what the lessons might be for organisational risk management.  The answer is quite a bit, and this article will just be an initial high level view.  The thinking is developed pretty uncritically from the book.  There will be plenty of scope […]

Always look on the bright side of life

Matthew Leitch has asked some questions on my Risk workshops post which I think are aimed at my use of terminology and, specifically, the treatment of good things which could happen.  This seemed to be worth its own Wandering. The term I’d prefer to use about the clouds of vagueness wreathing the ways things will work out […]

Risk workshops

I was talking to a colleague the other day who dismissed risk workshops in a rather peremptory way.  He painted a picture of a pompous facilitator locked up in a room with 20 or so bored people with better things to do.  “In any case we know all the risks and we can always review […]

Fools and liars

My ears are burning (metaphorically).  I’ve just read Bent Flyvbjerg’s paper on quality control and due diligence in project management.  His theme is the inaccuracy in forecast project costs and benefits.  Specifically, the tendency to underestimate costs and overestimate benefits is attributed to the ‘planning fallacy’, a creation of our old friends Tversky, Kahneman and co.  The source of […]