Project management Fundamentals

Unit 5 – Tutorial
Constructing a Risk Register

Group Exercise – Constructing a Risk Register

1. Work in teams of about four. Consider the project outlined in the provided Project
Overview Statement and Work Breakdown Structure.
2. Use Brainstorming to produce a list of project risks. Make sure that your risks are
specific: for example, ‘the project might be late’ is pretty useless, as this is a risk
effect, as opposed to a risk event, and is not precise enough to allow control
measures to be identified.
3. Use the following Checklist to add further risks to the list:
 Natural disasters
 Human resources
 Technical risks
 Business risks
 Social and political risks
 Risks with suppliers and contractors
 Accidents
4. Use the Project Overview Statement to identify further risks: What might go wrong
with this part of the scope? What might happen to prevent this objective being
met? What happens if an assumption is wrong?
5. If time permits, draw a Cause-and-Effect Diagram. The effect should be, ‘The
project fails to meet its objectives’. Add all of your previously identified risks to the
cause-and-effect diagram, and any others that occur to you as you go along.
6. Use Multivoting to select about 10 risks considered significant by your team. For
each of these risks, assess their likelihood and impact on a scale from 1 to 6.
Calculate risk exposure (hazard) by multiplying the likelihood and impact.
7. Decide on a risk control measure or measures for the most significant 5 risks. Use
the following categorisation of control measures to suggest possible controls:
 Reduction
 Mitigation
 Transfer
 Avoidance
 Acceptance
8. Assign a team member as the ‘owner’ of each risk.
9. Consider these questions:
 Has this risk analysis suggested more work packages to add to the WBS?
 Are there any areas of the project which are uncertain (perhaps full of unk-
unks) where we should do further investigation?

Page 1 of 3
 Can you see any opportunities?

Page 2 of 3
This sheet can be used to facilitate the process:

Voting
Risk A B C D E Likelihoo Impact Hazard Control
d

Page 3 of 3