ABSTRACT
The occurrence of a crisis may prevent the successful achievement of project objectives. Ultimately it may even cause project termination therefore those involved with risk assessment and management must adopt a proactive approach to crisis avoidance. Once a crisis has been activated there is no going back - it may be possible to handle the crisis effectively but significant change will have taken place and time and money will have been spent on ensuring the project remains on course.
An examination of crises histories reveals that very often there are a variety of early warning signals which if detected may help avoid the final trigger which throws a project into crisis mode. In order to identify these signals it is essential that on-going scanning of the complex internal and external operating environment of the project takes place.
Crisis triggers may be categorised into those caused by internal forces and those caused by external forces and by technical/economic failure or human/organisational/social failure. A grid, based on the work of Shrivastava and Mitroff [1], has been prepared to identify the various types of triggering events which may initiate a crisis in the management of a project.
