Risk Assessment for Large-Scale Transport Infrastructure Projects

Abstract

The identification of risks in the planning phase of a project and the arrangement of impact values has become a fundamental basis of today's various construction projects. Despite robust and well-planned projects, unexpected problems will likely emerge in any stage of the project if possible risks are not identified and assessed beforehand. Therefore, this process has become a requisite in increasing the success as well as minimizing the problems of a project. Large-scale transport infrastructure projects (LSTIPs), technologically equipped projects, meet the essential needs of the recent era but also bring about numerous risks such as financial, technical, managerial, political, economic, natural or legal. Hence, being exposed to such risks in the planning and construction stage of LSTIPs, could lead to negative consequences in the fate of the project. This study aims to develop a conceptual framework which provides a pathway for the planning phase and to offer risk lists and their priority orders that reinforce the construction phase. These aims were achieved by identifying the risk factors that could arise in European and Middle Eastern LSTIPs and detecting significances of the risks according to these types of projects. Data collection was performed through a substantial review of literature and a questionnaire conducted to contracting firms and civil engineering consultancies operating in Europe and the Middle East. According to the findings, the comparison between the leading risks encountered in European and in Middle Eastern LSTIPs revealed that two of the regions were confronted with both similar and different risks. Europe and the Middle East's foremost common risk factor is the financial strength of the client listed under the financial category. When regions are considered individually, Europe gives prior importance to the resource availability risk factor in the economic category whereas increased material cost located under the same category is the primary risk factor for the Middle East. As a result, the data obtained from this research study could be deployed as a standardized risk list in the planning stage of forthcoming LSTIPs as well as a guideline for the assessment phase of priority orders. Furthermore, this study suggests a further and detailed investigation on mitigating risks that occur in LSTIPs.