**5. Conclusions**

Risk management is an important field of knowledge that is an integral part of [any] efficient project management. It is important that risk management be completely integrated into other areas of project management. The paper dealt with the risk management in infrastructure projects, which, compared to other projects (e.g., product development or IT projects), involve considerably more impact factors related to the environment and that are included in the process of planning and management of such projects.

The paper outlined the methods and tools that project management can use in project planning and management. The following methods are of particular importance for managing of an infrastructure project: an Ishikawa diagram for identification of potential risks; a table of critical success factors that identified risks to individual activities and classifies the risks of the activities as high-, medium-, and low-risk; a standard risk model that serves to determine expected losses in time, money, and quality; and finally, a risk map that classifies a risk as a critical or noncritical risk. The risk map can be used to analyse how the anticipated measures could work to reduce the critical nature of the risk.

The above-indicated methods have been successfully tested in the erection of the HPP reservoir. The project represented an important instance of interference in the space, even more than the placement of the HPP itself. It has been proved that the key risks in this project were those risks on which neither the investor nor the contractors have any influence. In our case, this was the integration of the building into the space and problems relating to the preparation of the DPN, which is crucial for further planning and subsequent project management. Risks also appeared in the acquisition of the land and in respect of the requirements demanded by parties granting the relevant permits, by the state, the groups with special interests, and pressure groups (conservationists).

The use of the proposed extended model for the identification, assessment, prioritisation, and management of risks proved highly successful in the HPP project. The table of critical success factors also proved very successful. It was created using the MS Project software that was also used for the planning and monitoring of the project. This integration allowed the project team to have the risk management data available in the same tool as other project management data, which proved to be particularly efficient in monitoring the execution of the project.

**15**

provided the original work is properly cited.

Lidija Rihar, Tena Žužek, Tomaž Berlec and Janez Kušar\*

\*Address all correspondence to: janez.kusar@fs.uni-lj.si

*Standard Risk Management Model for Infrastructure Projects*

What was new here was the use of the standard risk model, with which the project team could (as with the critical success factor table) identify and quantify the importance of each risk and assess the expected loss. The advantage of using the model is its simplicity; its key drawback, however, lies in the fact that the result depends on the accuracy of team members' assessments of the probability and total loss factors. Nevertheless, this drawback did not prove a substantial disadvantage. The risk map, with which risks are classified as critical and noncritical, proved to be a very important tool. Determining the threshold line of acceptable losses could appear as a problem, as it is based on a subjective assessment of the team members. Also, the possibility of checking the impacts of the foreseen measures adopted for the most critical risks is important; yet as it turns out, there is often a lack of motivation among team members, and they prefer, instead, to simply follow their

The execution of the project in question revealed that infrastructure projects are considerably more demanding than other projects in terms of risk management. As a rule, stakeholders from the wider environment have to participate in such

In any follow-up (work, analysis, research), it would be important to consider how to support the subjective determination of the data for the use of the standard model by means of decision-making methods in cases where there is an element of

The results of the proposed extended model for managing the risks of this infrastructure project will be a great help to project managers who will carry out

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Slovenian

Research Agency (research core funding no. P2-0270, agreement no.

*DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.83389*

intuition.

projects.

uncertainty present.

similar projects in the future.

**Acknowledgements**

1000-15-0510).

**Author details**

© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,

Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

*Standard Risk Management Model for Infrastructure Projects DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5772/intechopen.83389*

*Risk Management in Construction Projects*

**5. Conclusions**

management of such projects.

could work to reduce the critical nature of the risk.

special interests, and pressure groups (conservationists).

particularly efficient in monitoring the execution of the project.

still expected, yet the expected loss is EUR 80,000, which is less than the maximum threshold value of EUR 100,000 the project team had determined for this risk.

started operating on schedule and according to the timeline.

In the project execution phase, the activities of the project must be closely monitored, and attention should be paid to the time of risk event occurrence. The project team can determine risk indicators [12] that remind them of points in time when a potential risk event might or could be expected to occur. It is not enough only to introduce measures, the situation should be constantly monitored and additional measures adopted to mitigate the impacts of risk events that occur. In the case of the erection of the HPP reservoir, the project team also constantly monitored the risk management activities and adopted adequate measures as required. The management of risks in the project in question was ultimately successful, since the HPP

It is important to note that once the project was completed, the project team made a thorough analysis of their risk management strategy and identified those solutions that proved effective and successful and that would be worth using in similar projects in the future, as well as ineffective solutions that should be avoided in future projects.

Risk management is an important field of knowledge that is an integral part of [any] efficient project management. It is important that risk management be completely integrated into other areas of project management. The paper dealt with the risk management in infrastructure projects, which, compared to other projects (e.g., product development or IT projects), involve considerably more impact factors related to the environment and that are included in the process of planning and

The paper outlined the methods and tools that project management can use in project planning and management. The following methods are of particular importance for managing of an infrastructure project: an Ishikawa diagram for identification of potential risks; a table of critical success factors that identified risks to individual activities and classifies the risks of the activities as high-, medium-, and low-risk; a standard risk model that serves to determine expected losses in time, money, and quality; and finally, a risk map that classifies a risk as a critical or noncritical risk. The risk map can be used to analyse how the anticipated measures

The above-indicated methods have been successfully tested in the erection of the HPP reservoir. The project represented an important instance of interference in the space, even more than the placement of the HPP itself. It has been proved that the key risks in this project were those risks on which neither the investor nor the contractors have any influence. In our case, this was the integration of the building into the space and problems relating to the preparation of the DPN, which is crucial for further planning and subsequent project management. Risks also appeared in the acquisition of the land and in respect of the requirements demanded by parties granting the relevant permits, by the state, the groups with

The use of the proposed extended model for the identification, assessment, prioritisation, and management of risks proved highly successful in the HPP project. The table of critical success factors also proved very successful. It was created using the MS Project software that was also used for the planning and monitoring of the project. This integration allowed the project team to have the risk management data available in the same tool as other project management data, which proved to be

**14**

What was new here was the use of the standard risk model, with which the project team could (as with the critical success factor table) identify and quantify the importance of each risk and assess the expected loss. The advantage of using the model is its simplicity; its key drawback, however, lies in the fact that the result depends on the accuracy of team members' assessments of the probability and total loss factors. Nevertheless, this drawback did not prove a substantial disadvantage. The risk map, with which risks are classified as critical and noncritical, proved to be a very important tool. Determining the threshold line of acceptable losses could appear as a problem, as it is based on a subjective assessment of the team members. Also, the possibility of checking the impacts of the foreseen measures adopted for the most critical risks is important; yet as it turns out, there is often a lack of motivation among team members, and they prefer, instead, to simply follow their intuition.

The execution of the project in question revealed that infrastructure projects are considerably more demanding than other projects in terms of risk management. As a rule, stakeholders from the wider environment have to participate in such projects.

In any follow-up (work, analysis, research), it would be important to consider how to support the subjective determination of the data for the use of the standard model by means of decision-making methods in cases where there is an element of uncertainty present.

The results of the proposed extended model for managing the risks of this infrastructure project will be a great help to project managers who will carry out similar projects in the future.

### **Acknowledgements**

The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Slovenian Research Agency (research core funding no. P2-0270, agreement no. 1000-15-0510).

#### **Author details**

Lidija Rihar, Tena Žužek, Tomaž Berlec and Janez Kušar\* Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Ljubljana, Ljubljana, Slovenia

\*Address all correspondence to: janez.kusar@fs.uni-lj.si

© 2019 The Author(s). Licensee IntechOpen. This chapter is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
