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A User-Oriented Implementation of Risk Breakdown Structure in Construction Risk Management



Author(s)

Julinda Keci

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DOI:10.17265/1934-7359/2014.05.002

Department of Civil Engineering, Epoka University, Tirana 1039, Albania

The construction industry works under conditions of uncertainties and risks leading to poor performance, increased cost and time and decreased quality. In these conditions, the dynamic identification and assessment of project risks among a vary range of potential factors is considered of vital importance. The introduction of RBS (risk breakdown structure) as a hierarchically organized depiction of identified risks was considered a suitable tool in risk management, especially in construction, due to its many advantages in synthetic representation and dynamic nature. This paper presents a user-oriented implementation of RBS to assist the project managers in identifying and assessing potential risk factors affecting construction process. The evidential analogies between WBS (work breakdown structure) and RBS are captured and used in the proposed framework which interconnects them into a 2D (two dimensional) matrix used to associate risks to the specific project activities. The proposed framework is applied to a government funded design-bid-build project. The obtained results clearly demonstrate the advantages in identifying the most risky activities, as well as the most important risk factors affecting the whole project.

Construction risk, RBS, user-oriented approach, 2D matrix, WBS.