Every construction project comes with risks. The question is how to manage and reduce their impact. Learn what you need to know about managing risk on a construction project.
Defining Risk Management
Risk management is the process of assessing potential dangers on a construction site, monitoring them, and taking measures to minimize or eliminate them entirely.
Part of this process requires you to create a risk management plan. Doing so will help you identify, monitor, and control risks when they occur. While you can do this manually, a management program makes the process considerably easier and more efficient.
5 Types of Construction Risks
Before you begin crafting your risk management plan, it is important to identify the specific risks at play on your construction site. Some common types of construction risks include:
- Legal: issues relating to legal documents and disputes
- Environmental: a natural disaster or phenomenon that can impact the flow of work
- Project: a risk to the project as a whole. Examples include resource mismanagement and timeline miscalculations
- Financial: any issues that impact the cost of construction
- Safety: a hazard that could potentially lead to injury
How Do You Manage Risks on the Job Site?
Once you know your project’s risks, you can start to monitor, manage, or even eliminate their effects. Here are a few tips for managing risks on a construction project.
Prioritize by Likelihood and Severity
Go through your list of risks and ask yourself: What’s the probability of this occurring, and how much damage could it do? Then, prioritize potential issues based on the likelihood they will occur as well as their potential severity. You should address high-probability, high-impact risks first.
What’s Your Strategy?
How will you manage or eliminate hazards? Will you avoid potential risks entirely and find another way to accomplish tasks? Will you transfer responsibility for the risk by investing in insurance? Will you try to keep the risk low through training workers? Consider your options carefully and choose the approach that makes the most sense for your project.
Work as a Team
To mitigate risk, everyone on-site needs to work as a team. Be sure to communicate the dangers present as well as how you plan to address them. Doing so will allow everyone to follow proper procedures and keep potential problems at bay.
Rely on Tech
Managing risk on a construction site requires significant work. Fortunately, relying on tech management software can help you identify and manage hazards more quickly, easily, and efficiently.
At HeadLight, we aim to help you complete construction projects on time, successfully, and with minimal danger. That’s why we created Fieldbook: This solution enables you to easily plan, capture, and act upon crucial construction site data for the purposes of reducing or even eliminating risk.
Learn more about how our construction management software can help you manage risk on your construction project, or request a demo today.
