The Institute of Risk Management (IRM) has recently produced our Risk Predictions for Business 2016 – we asked Vinay Shrivastava, Fellow of the IRM and Associate Director, Turner & Townsend Infrastructure (and also the Chairman of our Infrastructure Portfolio, Programme and Project Risk Sector Interest Group), what he thought the major risks facing the construction industry are:
“I expect that the risk landscape for the construction industry in 2016 will closely mirror that of 2015. The major threats to large projects will continue to be delivery vulnerability driven by increasingly unpredictable weather and critical skill shortages.
Good construction risk managers are in critical undersupply, for instance, as well as numerous specialist trades. This often leads to fantastic premiums being paid to secure required resources. Equally, the linkage between technology and reduced supply chain resilience cannot afford to be ignored. Many megaprojects continue to redefine what is possible by heavily investing in new technology which further compounds the risk of an unfamiliar solution with the risk associated with a narrow supply chain. In such cases, supply chain failure can have catastrophic consequences as there is simply no supplier base to fall back to.
Longer term projects are also especially exposed to the vagaries of the commodity market. It is interesting to note that the construction industry uses more than half of the entire world’s annual steel production and is therefore very sensitive to price spikes. Lastly, the risk of loss of life or health is the risk that defines the construction industry and is one that we must do better at eliminating in 2016. The UK Health and Safety Executive (HSE) offer that 35 persons were fatally injured in 2014/15 in the construction sector. Let us hope that 2016 is a safer year for our valued workers”.
Risk has never been higher on the agenda, the Health and Safety Executive are currently running a campaign about the dangers of working at heights at work for example – we at the IRM offer training and qualifications for all levels off staff with have an involvement in risk practices for your organisation
Why not find out more about membership of the IRM and how our training and qualifications can benefit you and your staff. An example of one of our leading courses is Project Risk Management, which leads to the APM’s Level 1 Certificate in Project Risk Management.