Risk management practices of leading UK cost consultants

Risk management (RM) is now widely accepted as an important tool in the management of projects. Through a series of semi-structured interviews with RM facilitators, current practice is explored. The findings provide a number of soft benchmarks. Interest in RM comes largely from educated clients and is regularly adopted as an integrated front-end service. Ongoing RM studies throughout the project life cycle are limited largely to the public sector and utilities. The use of RM workshops and the production of risk registers are commonplace. The use of Monte Carlo simulation through specialist software is widespread as a means of obtaining a greater degree of confidence in project budgets. There is scepticism regarding the usefulness of complex risk analysis techniques and a predisposition to rely on judgement based on experience. The use of historical data is limited. Evaluation of the service is informal and there is a relative lack of training and skills development underpinning RM provision.