Since the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center, New York in September 2001, the focus on terrorism and the ability of society and organisations to withstand such incidents has sharpened considerably. At the same time, business continuity and dealing with crises have moved to the forefront of organisations' awareness, not least due to improved regulatory requirements and guidelines. However, this thesis contends that the current methodological framework for responding to terrorist incidents is flawed, resulting in the same issues becoming evident, over and over again. It is argued that an awareness and adoption of three key risk and crisis management methodologies: Fink's Crisis Management Methodology, Risk Communication and Isomorphic Learning, could improve the analysis of such incidents and hence better the response in future. Three significant terrorist attacks were analysed within the context of contemporary literature and two factors were found to be the main cause of difficulties in managing the response to each of the incidents: communication and an inability to achieve organisational learning. It was argued that part of the reason for this was that organisations did not consider a link between crisis and terrorist incident response management and that learning from past experiences did not go beyond the most superficial level in most instances. This thesis demonstrated how risk and crisis management methodologies could have addressed each of the issues that were identified in the case studies and clarified the contribution that they could make. Of primary importance was the recognition that events that may appear dissimilar are, on examination, frequently intrinsically similar and hence can provide valuable learning opportunities.

Thesis (MCIS - Computer and Information Sciences) -- AUT University, 2007. / Primary supervisor: Anne Philpott. Co-supervisor: Professor Stephen MacDonell. Includes bibliographical references. Also held in print (x, 147 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm.) in City Campus Theses Collection (T 005.12 LIC)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2002. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references. Available also from UMI Company.

Thesis (M. Sc.)--University of Alberta, 2010. / Title from pdf file main screen (viewed on July 8, 2010). A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies and Research in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Construction Engineering and Management, Civil & Environmental Engineering Department, University of Alberta. Includes bibliographical references.

Embarking on a construction project means taking a risk. Project risk management (PRM) provides an effective approach to improve decision making and minimise project risk. Project risks may not possess the same level of significance for different countries, markets and projects. Current research on PRM in China has been rather theoretical, addressing technology issues. Considering the current practice in the Chinese construction industry (CCl), the PRM needs understanding and support from the industry and a mature market environment. This research aims to establish PRM strategies for identifying and adopting the best practice to provide practical guidelines for the CCl, thus improving the PRM, motivating the reform of the Chinese construction market, and enabling the CCl to function in the competitive environment of globalisation. An extensive literature review and a number of case studies for construction projects in China have been conducted, addressing issues closely related to the research. A systematic analysis is employed and developed for project planning and decision making. Contractual risks are considered as the first step and catalyst for improving the PRM in the CCl. Built on the findings from the case studies and analysis, the research puts forward a framework of contractual risk management to study the concept, identification and classification of contractual risks. Contract interfaces are analysed for contractual risk management under various project procurement routes (PPRs). The potentially large improvements to the PRM and reform of the Chinese construction market from the introduction and application of innovative PPRs and their contractual conditions are addressed. Two mathematical models -a probabilistic analysis model and an effective information entropy model for key contractual risks -are presented. The validity and applicability of the models are demonstrated with sample data for the CCl. Detailed recommendations and guidelines for the implementation of the proposed strategies are suggested.

The aim of this master's thesis, entitled Project Risk Management, is to identify the risks of a particular project, to analyze them and to propose measures to reduce or eliminate them as much as possible. The thesis is divided into theoretical and practical parts. The theoretical part introduces the basic professional terminology, as well as the individual phases of the project management, and emphasis is placed on presenting the project risk management process. The findings from the theoretical part are then applied in the practical part. This practical part introduces the context of the project of building a community center on the Rusinga Island and its output is an identification of risks, risk analysis and also a proposal of preventive measures of the risks of this project.

Many construction projects suffer from mismanagement despite continuous improvement in the field of project risk management. With the construction boom in the Middle East, and especially the Gulf region, construction projects suffer from a high failure rate. The lack of the implementation of standard risk management methods in the construction industry of the Gulf region leads to construction projects that suffer from poor performance, delays, disputes and claims. In order to design a standard risk management model, there is a need for an in-depth study of the construction environment to lay down the foundation for designing a Standard Construction Risk Management Model in the future. This study aims to identify and assess risk factors during the construction phase of construction projects in the Gulf region focusing on two countries of the Gulf region – the State of Kuwait and Kingdom of Bahrain. The risk factors (RF) were identified and assessed and responsiblty shares were allocated to construction parties: clients, consultants and contractors. The research strategy was a Sequential mixed-method. It was adopted by means of interview surveys followed by a questionnaire. The study started with a qualitative approach in which eleven practitioners were interviewed to evaluate and validate a questionnaire. This was followed by questionnaires distributed to a representative sample of 140 consultants, 128 contractors and 139 clients in the State of Kuwait, in addition to 71 consultants, 99 contractors and 78 clients in the Kingdom of Bahrain, to assess the negative impact of the risk factors during the construction phase on the completion of construction projects. Parametric tests were used to analyse the collected data. Including, the Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test, the independent-samples t-test, and Pearson correlation coefficient (r) test. The study revealed a difference in perception of the risk factors negative impact on project completion between Kuwait and Bahrain, Bahrain perceives highest degree of impact on projects. On the categories level, both countries agreed on the Finance category as the main factor threatening project completion, and the External category as having the least impact. In Kuwait, almost all parties agreed on the negative impact of all categories on project completion except contractors who have different perception on management category. Furthermore, clients and consultants held different perceptions on the impact of design category. Bahrain results reveal significant differences in perceptions on the impact of categories between clients and the other parties, however there are slight differences between consultants and contractors in all categories. The limitations of the study include only large contractors and consultants in Kuwait and Bahrain were included in the study. The study was limited to the construction phase of construction projects and only six categories of risk factors were included in the study and This research was based on practitioners and participants opinions rather than actual occurrences on projects.

Diplomová práce je zaměřena na zpracování návrhu realizaci vybraného projektu ve zvolené firmě s využitím vhodných metod, technik a nástrojů projektového řízení. V prní části praci bude proveden průzkum teoretické informaci ohledne problemaiky proektového řízení IT projektů. V druhé částí bude popsan součásný stav ve vybrané společnosti a na zakládě tohoto stavu budou aplikované vhodné metodiky a nástroje pro realizaci projektu v návrchové části práci.

In this study, a risk management methodology for the business development phase of a Turkish defense industry firm&rsquo / s projects is proposed. The proposed method is based on the contemporary risk management practices and offers the integration of risk management process on top of existing project management processes in the business development phase, besides being cost effective and applicable. The method suggests a format for a risk management plan with two new sections, results, and compliancy. Furthermore, the method suggests the development of risk response plans prior to the implementation of quantitative risk analysis contrary to the applications in the literature, in order to reduce the size and the complexity of data to be analyzed. The method proposed also benefits from software tools that are easy to use and compatible with the existing project management practices executed in the firm. The method also aims to lead the construction of necessary risk databases that are specific to projects of the firm. The method also discusses the risk management framework under the scope of organizational aspects and decisions. Furthermore, a sample project of the firm is evaluated both with the current method and with the proposed method in order to put forward the advantages of the proposed system over the existing risk management practices of the firm.

IT projects are temporary organizations of strategic importance. Companies invest large amounts of money, time, and resources into business-embedded IT projects in order to change and gain a competitive advantage. Extreme cases of failures were previously only analyzed as case studies, e.g., Denver Airport, London Stock Exchange Taurus, London Ambulance Service. The research poses an important question: What is the risk of these outliers, that is markedly deviant observations of IT project performance? What causes outliers in IT project performance? Only very few studies problematized the frequency of outliers directly. Reported numbers range from 33% to as low as 0.2%. The variation has been explained through biases in planning processes of organizations and as artefact of data collection. An alternative explanation is that the true nature of IT projects contains more variation than commonly assumed. A rich body of organizational, project management, and IT project management literature offers antecedents of outliers. The extant literature falls broadly into three schools of thought: (1) system-centric, (2) event-centric, and (3) process-centric theories of why outliers occurred. System-centric explanations focus on the question of system design, based on theories of normal accidents and high reliability organizations. Event-centric explanations focus on how organizations respond to rare events that impact the organization, based on theories of crisis management, management of organizational turbulence, and strategic surprises. Process-centric explanations focus on the role of managing uncertainty and risk over time, based on theories of man-made disasters, escalation of commitment to a failing course of action, and the normalization of deviance. The study is based on the archival research of 4,307 IT projects from 190 organizations. The findings show that the tail of the cost, schedule, and effort performance distributions is best fitted by a power law, with overwhelming goodness of fit. Moreover, the findings show that system-centric explanations and process-centric theories offer explanations for the thickness of the tail and the odds of an outlier occurring. In particular five variables were associated with outliers: estimated cost and duration, perceived uniqueness of the project, the qualification and motivation of the project team, and the effectiveness of monitoring and controlling. The results show that outliers are not chance events; they follow patterns that are describable. The study showed how design factors, that are often conceptualized as system complexities, and execution factors, that are often conceptualized as the effectiveness of project processes, explain project outliers. Lastly, the thesis draws implications for research and practice.