The quality of risk management in the Civil Engineering - Assignment Example

Since the international contractors operate outside their normal business jurisdiction, there are numerous uncertainties. Civil engineers working outside their resident jurisdiction face such difficulties as different management approaches, foreign technology, legal requirements, and uncommon construction practices and systems. The understanding and appreciation of the risks associated with these international projects can be instrumental to the success of these projects. International projects failing to meet the schedule, scope and budget allocated more often have to encounter a horde of impacts some of which bear serious political, social and economic ramifications. U.S.

engineering firms have a history of significant involvement in most global markets. These firms continue to aggressively pursue international projects and opportunities. In as much as international projects appear like they are lucrative investments, such projects attract a heightened level of risk. Most participants and stake holders such as investors agree that the successful delivery of such projects has in many occasions proven to be quite difficult. In this light, organizations that possess a broad understanding of the political, operations, commercial and construction risk factors have higher chances of successful planning, execution and delivery of international projects.

Currency exchange rates, social and political instability are other critical factors that compound the complexities of international engagements. It is however rather complex to identify and make an assessment of the risks linked to capital facilities and there exists limited management techniques or tools that can identify, analyze and deal with the risk. 2. Broadly identify the main aim/s, associated objectives and scientific hypotheses (if applicable); The principal purpose of this research will be to better appreciate and to develop risk identification and assessment methods for projects that are of an international capital facility project nature.

The study’s objective will include but may be necessarily limited to 1. Formulate an inclusive international capital project process or an approach. 2. Device tools that will aid in the identification and assessment of the different risk levels. 3. Structure an internationally accepted project performance appraisal metric. 4. Generate the documents that will help the project teams when tackling such issues and this should also include methods of mitigating the risk. The plan is to conduct sixteen structured interviews with project leaders and civil engineering executives with multinational experience.

There are two key purposes that will drive the structured interviews. Firstly, the researcher hopes to gather industry perspective on the attitude toward risk assessment, the hindrances and general trends when involved in international engineering project assignments. This will necessitate the researcher to develop a well structured questionnaire that will not only be used to obtain the attitudes towards risk assessment and resultant concerns but will be extended to contain the rationale and value of international project risk assessment performance, background information characteristic of international projects, procedures and practices of risk management.

Secondly, the