908 Town & Country, Suite 550 Houston, TX 77024 Phone: (713) 278-7622 info@pmccinc.com
After years in the “wilderness”, the recognition of the importance of identifying and managing risks during ALL phases of the project life cycle has finally come to the forefront. PMCC has been helping clients perform project risk assessments since our inception in 1991. PMCC can help your company or project team focus on risk techniques that are appropriate to the size and complexity of the project deliverables. For large and/or first time projects, the utilization of risk statistical techniques (e.g. PERT, Monte Carlo) may be applicable. However for most project teams, PMCC believes the use of risk identification techniques (e.g. SWOT, brainstorming) that generate a risk register are sufficient. Once the risks are identified, the use of assessment methodologies such as the risk/probability matrix can allow a project team to apply common sense in determining which risks to mitigate or simply accept.
Key concepts and processes that PMCC can help your company incorporate include:
Risk Management is not ROCKET SCIENCE! Many project teams are intimidated by the risk management process because they believe that it is largely statistical in nature and involves the use of mathematical principles that the project team members were last exposed to in college! PMCC believes the risk management should be an integral part of the project cycle and that statistical technique should only be used for large/unique/complex projects that are completely out of the mainstream for the corporate culture. PMCC can educate your staff on the application of Best Practice Risk Management in a manner that is appropriate for the project at hand.
Risk before Cost and Schedule! PMCC believes that most executives and managers ask the wrong questions once the project gets going. Within a week or two of project inception, management begins to ask for schedules and budgets. PMCC believes this is fundamentally wrong! Management during the initiation and design phases of a project should be focusing on scope clarification and the attendant risks. Once as much as practical is known about the scope and the risks have been identified against that scope, THEN and only then should the focus shift to the budgets and schedules needed to deliver the identified scope of work. PMCC can help your organization focus on first things first at project inception.
Beware when applying Contingency to Mitigate Risk. Many companies apply standard contingencies to project estimates (e.g. 3%, 10%, 15%) to mitigate risks for “unknown-unknowns”. However within the organization, the functional departments may also be applying contingency to their estimates to mitigate risks related to “known-unknowns”. For companies engaged in competitive bidding, this “piling on” of contingency can make the corporation non-competitive in national and world markets. PMCC has trained thousands of corporate executives, managers, and project members in best practice Project Risk management so that they understand when and how to apply contingency.
Risk Assessments. PMCC has performed risk audits of projects to help the project team and management understand the level of risk they are dealing with for the particular project. As a neutral “third party”, we have been able to identify risks that were missed by a project team busy “fighting fires” and have also served as facilitators to the project team to help identify and implement risk mitigation strategies.
For more information or to schedule a conference call to discuss how PMCC might help your company or project team with project risk management, please call us at 713-278-PMCC (7622).
Sampling of PMCC training courses related to project risk management that can customized for your organization:
