Risk Management in Construction Projects: Are Small Companies Prepared?

Risk management has always impacts in one or more project targets [1,2]. Although many projects are similar, each one is unique and has always specific risks associated with to. In fact, for a company to be successful, it must accomplish a proactive and consistent approach to risk management, during the project life-cycle, to be effective at all organizational levels [1]. Economic downturn experienced in the last 25 years provided a contribution to project management acceptance by companies. Companies started to recognize the need to compete, not just on a project cost basis, but also on quality and, later, on decreasing the schedule of projects and maximizing resources [3]. In the construction industry worldwide, there are several failures related to project management, from overrun and over-budget, to a high level of serious and mortal work accidents, low productivity or weak quality [4,5]. The application of risk management techniques influence performance improvement (of quality, costs, schedule or workers safety) of the project [1,2]. Those factors put the project at risk, affecting directly the productivity. Major projects suffer sporadic deviations during the life cycle, which increases the risk level and the need of risk management processes [4-6]. In bigger and more complex projects, this occurrence is much more frequent. The construction sector is composed by complex and dynamic environments, because of manual work dependency in the processes [7]. According to the same authors, the construction process can be considered a big exercise of risk management, because for many years there have been deviations in relation to the initial planning. The construction industry is under more risks than others since projects support their own risks, due to the fact that they involve different people or uncontrollable external factors [8,9]. Drawing on the literature review and particularly on the conclusions of a previous work in Portugal of Martins [10], this article intends to present the results of an investigation which aimed at checking the way companies, in particular small ones, apply risk management processes steps, as well as at analysing which are the most common detected restraints, evaluating the existent constraints and implemented techniques, and the reasons behind the non-application of some methodologies by the companies.