The construction industry has been, throughout time, heavily hindered by cost overruns and delays in the delivery of projects. This picture has only been magnified by the increased size, complexity, and urgent demand for their delivery. Responding to this circumstance has taken different paths. One of these has been updating and improving how the relevant parties of a project interact to achieve the intended results. This way, alternative delivery methods have emerged with different adaptations depending on the country's legislation and policies. A general acceptance has been gained over those systems where the parties interact more closely to reach a final product. This moves away from the classical division between Client and Contractor. Usually, the first takes a controlling role, while the second proceeds on the elaboration of the documents and works. The alternative approach requires from the participants a high component of collaboration. As a scheme where the Contractor is involved from an early stage of the project, the Dutch construction industry has used for a long time the Bouwteam agreement. However, the original drafted model lags from the updates implemented into the country's legal framework. This situation resulted in two independent organizations releasing their interpretation of this concept. The developed agreements give a good perspective on the activities to be done by the different parties during its implementation. However, these do not provide a clear insight into the Allocation and Control of the risks among the participants. Intending to incorporate the missing aspects of the Risk Management process within this collaborative setting, a model was developed to help identify hot spot areas of Risk when Bouwteams are used as a Project Delivery Method. The research also proposes a set of control strategies to help effectively tackle these. A multimethod approach was implemented, with different techniques following the same epistemological perspective. First, a Literature Review was used to build on the concepts relative to Project Delivery Methods and Risk Management methodologies. An empirical study with the analysis of four infrastructure projects in The Netherlands was carried out. During this second phase, the documentation of the projects was examined, and interviews with the project participants were held to investigate the risk management process when using this agreement. The result was a preliminary model consisting of three elements linked to the steps of the Risk Management Process; a set of Risks for the Bouwteam clustered in Risk Groups; a diagram to help assist in the allocation decision; and Control Strategies for these risks. The model was validated through an expert review, and insights into its possible implementation were discussed. The research concludes with a final model and a roadmap for its implementation. Procedural aspects and a set of contractual provisions are needed to incorporate the allocation and control of risks before and throughout the design phase. The elements presented in this research could work as the blueprint to include these within the Bouwteam setting. ... Read more

The construction sector has rather poorly developed organisational learning capabilities (Styhre, Josephson, & Knauseder, 2004) and this results in lessons not being learned and applied in future projects. Lessons learned form the intellectual assets of an organisation and can help to reduce project risks (Carrillo, Ruikar, & Fuller, 2013). However, no lessons learned process has yet been developed for risk management. Furthermore, lessons learned processes can be ineffective because other variables can facilitate or hinder an organisation’s ability to learn lessons (Duffeld & Whitty, 2012). Facilitators positively influence organisational learning and barriers influence it negatively. This research is the first to is the first to study and determine the interaction of facilitators and barriers with the lessons learned processes and also to develop a lessons learned process for risk management. This research focused on filling these gaps in the known scientific literature. This has been done by combining these separate theories into a framework to address the practical problems that organisations in the construction sector encounter and to answer the main research question: how can the lessons learned of risk management be collected and applied in future construction projects? ... Read more

The research is aimed to apply risk management and the GRMM (Generic Risk Maturity Model) in an ETO (Engineer-to-order) environment by using Huisman Equipment as a case study, to see what are the improvement areas. ... Read more

In current practice, the feasibility of the project goal is only assessed by project owners at the start of the project, up until the final investment decision (FID) is made. The final investment decision involves the decision of the owner to continue the project into the project execution phases. After the FID is made, the project goal feasibility is no longer assessed. Traditionally it is believed that in projects all decisions are made before the final investment decision and during the project there is no requirement for additional decisions. However, in practice during the project execution phase decisions need to be made partly because of project risks and uncertainty. During the project execution phase in which the actual engineering, procurement and construction is conducted, decision-makers only evaluate the impact of their decisions on time, cost and quality criteria (together called the iron triangle) instead of on the long-term project objective, the project goal. The project goal of industrial engineering projects is to deliver a product for sale, e.g. oil, natural gas and high-volume chemicals created by an industrial asset. The construction of the industrial asset is defined in this research as delivering the project output. The construction of the asset (project output) is thereby a means to an end (project goal). Whether the project goal is feasible or not depends on whether the benefits for the owner outweigh the associated cost. ... Read more

Risk appetite is an important directive for the risk management strategy (Hopkin, 2014). At the present there is not much consensus on the appearance of a risk appetite, how it should be established and in which way it could be used (Quail, 2012). This shows a clear knowledge gap about what risk appetite actually comprises. Despite the recognition that risk appetite is an important aspect of risk management and lately got attention from academic research, it is not clear what actually drives risk appetite.
Therefore the objective of this research is to get hold of the risk appetite concept by providing insights in the driving factors that influence risk appetite. The second research objective is to provide insights in the relation between the identified driving factors and risk appetite... ... Read more

This research focusses on delivering a proposed procedure that determines interactions among multiple changes. The basis for this is obtained from literature and research papers that focus on the cumulative impacts of multiple project changes. The construction industry is currently suffering from a productivity problem, resulting from the cumulative impacts of multiple changes. Scientific theories suggest that interaction among changes is an essential factor for the cumulative impacts of changes. A brief study of the literature results in the development of a procedure to determine and show interactions among multiple changes. The procedure is applied in three real projects undertaken by ENGIE services West Industry, Rotterdam, to test its application. The results from the three projects show interactions among their significant changes, with limitations on obtaining the impacts from the points of interactions. An understanding is obtained from this, which suggest that at points of interactions, there is an additional resource demand by the changes, which may contribute towards the cumulative impact of changes. Thereby, this research provides a framework to construction companies that aids in determining and showing points of interactions among multiple changes while providing a reasonable understanding regarding the cumulative impacts of multiple changes.
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Within projects, there are a lot of elements that change. Change leads to uncertainty, and as a result, risks appear. A lot of projects fail due to uncertainty and risks. Especially complex projects are more vulnerable to risks (Hertogh & Westerveld, 2010). Complex projects are seen as large projects with long time schedules, multi-ownership, involving substantial resources, significant political issues and significant novelty (Chapman & Ward, 1997). The root causes of project related risks are mostly part of the organizational dynamics and multidisciplinary nature of the business´ organization (Thamhain, 2013). For this reason, risk management becomes important, which is especially crucial in technology-based projects. Risk management must be seen as an ongoing review process in the whole Project Life Cycle (Thamhain, 2013). Chapman and Ward (1997) stated already in 1997 that risk management must be a core process within the strategic management of any business or organization. No matter the size, the activity, or the sector. Risk management has the aim to reduce risks (Nicholas & Steyn, 2012). Widely, a lot of research is performed to risk management standards. These standards give hands on managing risks and are mostly described in an abstract way as it must be applicable to all projects. The general risk management standards that are defined in literature are implemented in all mature risk management organizations in extreme complex projects to manage risks (Caño & Cruz, 2002). Risk management is a process that should be integrated within project management (Nicholas & Steyn, 2012; Zou, Chen, & Chan, 2010). It is widely recognized by leading project management institutions that risk management should be an integral part of the project management (Caño & Cruz, 2002). While making risk management an integral part of project management, it is necessary that risk management must be adopted by the project management approach. Risk management is not just a management tool that can be added besides the project management but it must be part of the project management (Chapman and Ward, 1997). ... Read more

The main question which this thesis research answers is: “How do Dutch regional water authorities (WS) perform project risk management practices in infrastructural projects and which areas for improvement can be identified?” The initial hypothesis prior to this thesis research was that risk management is almost non-existent and/or should be completely developed within the water authority. This hypothesis was based on the findings of previous researches, which concluded that risk management is either non-existing (Scholten 2007) or has to be completely developed as part of project steering and control (Taskforce 2010). The overriding conclusion in this thesis is that risk management is currently part of integral project management at the WS. The history and the resulting culture results in a risk aware organisation in which the necessity and importance of performing risk management in projects is naturally understood. In all projects analyzed, elements of risk management were identified. Risks were assessed from different perspectives, control measures were selected and performed and time and cost contingency for risk control were in place. Experts recognize that also other WS have (started to) professionalize(d) their entire project management practices. Especially those WS that participated in large projects for the program ‘Ruimte voor de rivier’ have already professionalized and also WS that are now conducting large projects in the High Water Protection Program (HWBP) are in the process of professionalizing their project management practices including includes risk management. ... Read more