Risk Registers Role In Project Management

Risk Register

In the context of the contemporary project management process, a risk register provides great support to project managers in the identification of risk factors, selection of mitigation policy, and selection of contingency plan. A risk register considers multiple variables like the probability of occurrence and their impact on the overall project. In this context, a rating is provided to evaluate the occurrence and possible implications of the risk on the overall project (Heagney, 2016).

This tool also assists the project manager in the determination of the current status of risk along with its owner of the risk so as a project manager would be able to track the current status of risk. In the present case of Chapman Hall Refurbishment Project, the project manager has identified different risk factors. For example, the project manager has identified that the project plan may exceed the provisional budget if extra labour hours would be needed. In the context of probability rating, this risk factor has gained a medium probability rating of 3, and it could have a medium impact with a rating of 3. Therefore, the mitigation plan related to increases in labour hours has been suggested to control the risk. If the selected project risk would not be controlled by the mitigation plan that a contingency plan related to an increase in the project budget could be implanted to handle the occurrence of risk in the near future.

Therefore, the probability and impact matrix associated with rating methodologies is considered as the most reliable element of the risk register in which a project manager can categories the risk in different colures for example ‘red’ for high risk, ‘orange’ for moderate and ‘green’ for low risk. Furthermore, the rating is also provided in which ‘1’ for the lowest risk and probability and ‘5’ for the highest risk and probability (O'Har, Senesi and Molenaar, 2017). With consideration of probability rating and risk assessment, a project manager would be able to evaluate the effectiveness of risk mitigation strategy along with the Post-mitigation risk assessment process (Kuchta and Ptaszyńska, 2017). By applying the probability and impact ratings, a project manager can also evaluate the requirements of contingency plan along with the role of risk owners to reduce the possible consequences of several risk factors on the efficiency of the overall project plan.

By implementing the risks’ probability and impact rating process after mitigation plan, a project manager can perform a systematic comparison with reference to pre-mitigated risk scores with the score of the initial stage through which an organisation would be able to manage the effectiveness of the project manager’s risk management strategy (Kuchta and Ptaszyńska, 2017).

Therefore, a risk register covers several variables of risk management process so a project planner can easily sport different problems and risk during the project planning and implementation. It also facilitates great platforms through which the top management in an organisation track risk in different stages. Moreover, it helps project planners in the attainment of the project objectives by considering appropriate risk mitigation strategy along with contingency plan to handle different risk drivers that could be emerged in different stages of project execution and could leave a significant impact on the project budget (Register, 2017). The risk register offers great support to the project team in managing the escalation of different risk factors in a clearer and easier manner.

Reference

• Heagney, J. (2016). Fundamentals of project management. Amacom.
• Kuchta, D. and Ptaszyńska, E. (2017, July). Fuzzy based risk register for construction project risk assessment. In AIP Conference Proceedings (Vol. 1863, No. 1, p. 230006). AIP Publishing LLC.
• O'Har, J.P., Senesi, C.W. and Molenaar, K.R. (2017). Development of a risk register spreadsheet tool for enterprise-and program-level risk management. Transportation research record, 2604(1), pp.19-27.
• Register, S. R. (2017). Strategic Risk Register. Policy, 4(2), 8.