Risk assessment practices in project scheduling to reduce potential delays

Abstract

Project delays are getting common nowadays. Project delays are happening in all industries whether it’s simple or complex projects. The implication of project delay is impact both owner and contractor. The owner will face delay in operating the facility which will cause loss of expected profit on daily basis. The contractor will have cost overrun and can be faced with liquidated damages or other penalties for finishing late. Therefore, it’s important to study potential delays at initial stage of project. Risk assessment is a technique can apply in project scheduling to identify potential risks and opportunities which affect the project schedule. But how efficiently the risk assessment in project scheduling is being practice in Malaysia. The objectives of this study are to identify the level of awareness of risk assessment in project schedule among project managers, evaluate feasibility of implementation of risk assessment on project scheduling, and to demonstrate risk assessment in project scheduling for a selected project. Thirty four (34) questionnaires sets using five-point Likert scale method were collected among project managers from construction, oil & gas, manufacturing and IT industries in Johor, Malaysia to answer the objective 1 and 2. While, objective 3 was answered through a case study on a sample project scheduling. The results of the study shows that knowledge level of the project managers is mostly agreed and feasibility of implementation is moderately agreed by respondent. Therefore, we can conclude that the feasibility of implementation is still lacking and improvements are required to allow the implementation of risk assessment in scheduling. Risk assessment was performed in scheduling for the selected project, total activities in critical path are 21 and 4 of them was identified as medium risk and recommended actions or mitigations for the medium risk were suggested.