ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to sketch-out the various components of risk and outlines the strategies for coping with risks and turbulence. Risk is the possibility that events, their resulting impacts and dynamic interactions may turn out differently than anticipated. Because of the nature of large engineering projects, practitioners tend to stress the negative impacts and take less notice of positive ones. In the International Program in the Management of Engineering and Construction (IMEC) study, managers were asked to identify and rank the risks they faced in the early front-end period of each project, Market-related risks dominated, followed by technical risks, and institutional/sovereign risks. Calling upon a range of disciplines, the IMEC study focused on themes such as coping with uncertainty through risk analysis, institution shaping, and strategies. The most striking phenomenon observed by IMEC was the tendency of projects facing turbulence to enter spirals of disintegration.
