Construction project risk identification in Iceland: Professional’s perspective

Abstract

Verksamningur er ein áhættusamasta viðskipta tegund sem til er með miklum líkum á mistökum af ýmsum ástæðum sem verktaki þarf að hafa í huga, bæði þegar hann býður í verkefni og á mismunandi stigum líftíma þess. Áhættu auðkenning í byggingarverkefnum er mikilvægt skref að velgengni verkefna en hefur ekki fengið alvarlega athygli margra verkefnastjóra og fyrirtækja um allan heim. Þessi ritgerð hefur auðkennt, lýst og flokkað 46 algengustu áhættuþætti á byggingarstigi framkvæmdaverkefna um allan heim. Meginmarkmið þessarar ritgerðar var að senda út könnun á íslenskra fagaðila sem vinna við verkefnastjórnun til þess að fá sýn þeirra á hverjar eru mikilvægustu áhættur á byggingarstigi framkvæmdaverkefna á Íslandi. Mikilvægi þeirra var metin með mikilvægis vísitölu eða Relative important index (RII) og áreiðanleiki gagnanna með áreiðanleikastuðullinum Cronbach’s alpha sem var reiknaður með forritinu Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Niðurstöður rannsóknarinnar raðar áhættunum frá sætum 1-46 eftir mikilvægi þeirra og topp tíu eftir mismunandi viðhorfum hópa af fagaðilum, eftir annars vegar starfstitlum og hins vegar fjölda ára reynslu. Greining var gerð með samanburði á við hverju mátti búast í niðurstöðum hennar á þeim tíma sem hún var send út. Þessi rannsókn hefur sínar takmarkanir þar sem ekki er hægt að greina allar áhættuþætti heldur aðeins þá mikilvægustu. Niðurstöðurnar geta nýst til frekari rannsókna, svo sem áhættugreiningar fyrir tiltekið verkefni, áhættu auðkenningu frá öðrum sjónarhornum eða áhættu gátlistinn þegar hafin er vinna við nýbyggingar á Íslandi.

Construction contracting is one of the riskiest business types available, with a very high failure rate for various reasons, which needs consideration when a contractor creates his final price for a project and during the building life cycle at different stages. The importance of risk identification in construction projects is a critical step in risk management which is one of the keys to project success but still has not been given serious attention by many construction managers and companies worldwide. This thesis has identified, described, and categorized 46 most common construction project risk factors worldwide during the construction stage of the building life cycle from a literature review to create a risk list. The categorization is in the following risk categories: construction, environmental, financial and economical, contractual and legal, design and technical, organizational, control and planning, political, and finally, resource risks. The main objective of this thesis was to send out a questionnaire survey to Icelandic professionals working in project management of constructions to get their overall and different perspectives on the most important risk factors in Iceland during the construction stage of the building life cycle. These professionals were either engineers, technicians, project managers, consultants, or owners and CEOs of contractor companies. A relative importance index (RII) was used to measure the importance of the risks, and for the reliability of the results, a reliability coefficient Cronbach's alpha was calculated with the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) software. The results include rankings from 1-46 of their importance generally in the country overall and top 10 for different perspectives considering different groups of professionals and a comparison of what could be expected generally in Iceland during the time it was sent out. This research has its limits where it was not possible to identify all construction project risks but only the most critical risks. The results can be used for further studies such as risk analysis for a specific project, as a part of a risk identification from other perspectives, or as a starting point for a risk identification checklist when starting a new construction project in Iceland.