ABSTRACT
The application of risk analysis methodologies to evaluate possible delays in project completion is tending more and more to become an essential prerequisite for project management quality. Since projects are non repetitive processes, historical data are scarcely useful and subjective judgements constitute the main source of information on the different factors influencing project development. For predictive purposes, the integration of available historical data - which is inevitably limited by the uniqueness of projects - and the subjective judgement of specialists based on previous experience in similar projects is, therefore, an inherent issue in the project management process. The paper proposes a systematic methodology to collect and integrate the input data needed for simulation analysis by means of specific tools, such as questionnaires, event-trees and bayesian inference. The methodology aims to obtain effective estimates of the duration of elementary activities, in order to evaluate the probability distribution of project completion time. It is applied to a real-world case of practical interest involving the planning of a project concerning a process plant.
