INTRODUCTION TO NEW SERIES ON RISK MANAGEMENT

As Chairman of the Association of Project Managers Special Interest Group on Project Risk Management, I was asked to organize a one- day seminar on risk management, which took place at the CBI Headquarters, London, UK, on 16 March 1989. I provided an introductory session; Special Interest Group colleagues Henry Needler (W S Atkins), Edward Walker (Eurolog) and John Perry (University of Birmingham) provided further sessions, with Peter Giles chairing.

The seminar attracted a large and very interested audience. It also led to an invitation from this journal to publish all the papers presented, as the start of a series on project risk management which I would guest edit, with an editorial to kick it off. You will find my paper and that by Henry Needler and his colleagues in this issue.

Academics who base much of their research on their activities as a consultant, as I do, have several axes to grind when offered such an opportunity. When circumstances require, I can be as subtle as most people, but on this occasion I think it might be useful to be very candid.

Having invested a good part of the last 15 years in the development of effective and efficient approaches to risk management, I want to see my ideas picked up and used by others, in part for the same reasons that any parent wants to see his or her children find happiness and success, in part because I am firmly convinced that those doing so would benefit from so doing. These ideas have been used by a significant number of organizations in the UK, the USA, Canada and elsewhere, and are regarded as reasonably mainstream thinking in the operational research community.

Unfortunately, however, these ideas are not mainstream in the project management community, and many people using formal project risk management procedures march to a different tune. I would like to change this situation, and make the central thrust of my approach a common basis, accepting that everyone will want and need their own variants of the associated ideas and techniques, and all ideas need further improvement and development over time. Hence, the introduction to project risk management provided by my paper in this issue is not an impartial review of all possible approaches; it is a frankly biased perspective that I want to ‘sell’ you, in the figurative sense.

At a considerably lower level of priority, I am interested in selling my services, and that of my departmental colleagues, as consultants, to help you implement risk management, to provide us with a basis for further research and development, and to preserve the roof over our heads.

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Other academics who cont~bute to this series will have a similar perspective and purpose. Consultants who contribute to this series, like Henry Needler, would have to be forgiven if their motives were slightly more commercial. I believe that our various biases do not matter. What matters is that those who have views based on experience put them, and that those who believe they may benefit from using formal approaches to risk management, for the first time, or in a new or extended manner, study the views offered, and make a judgement .

Hence, the reader should approach this series not as a unified and consistent view of what project risk management is about, but as a set of views which will often be complimentary, but sometimes contra- dictory. As guest editor of this series, I have accepted papers which argue views I do not always endorse, because I believe it would be an abuse of my position not to do so. If this makes life difficult for readers I apologize, but I believe it was the only proper option.

Part of my reason for drawing this to your attention is to warn the unwary, but the main reason is to stimulate more papers with further alternative points of view, debate, and critical evaluation of ideas before they are tried out in any given context.

In my view there are too many ‘easy to use’ ‘off the shelf approaches to risk management wandering about looking for problems to solve, and far too many people who want a single simple solution to all their problems. I have a lot of sympathy for the vendors and the buyers, but I am deeply concerned by the number of people who abandon the idea of formal risk management approaches because they have tried an inappropriate approach which did not work, or failed to implement properly what might have been an appropriate approach. There are good approaches, better approaches, worse approaches, and counter productive approaches which may damage your health - which approach fits in which category depends to a considerable extent upon the circumstances. There is no one ‘best approach’ to all situations for all organizations. Making the best choice and then making the best of that choice in any given situation is a non-trivial problem.

For a variety of reasons there is a considerable upsurge in interest in formal approaches to project risk management. I hope this series helps to stimulate this interest further, and to translate interest into action, with informed and considered judgements about what action is most appropriate.

Chris Chapman Department of Accounting and Management Science,

University of Southampton, UK

Project ~anagcment