Doctoral Training Centre (DTC) Research Students Core Skills Training Programme Monday 17th December 2012 09.

30 11.30 Auditorium Vincent Building

Principles of Project Risk Management

Most people are used to managing risk in their everyday life. For example, if you have to catch a particular flight, then you will often allow extra time to get to the airport to compensate for any possible travel delays on your journey to the airport but still catch your flight on time. Exactly the same principles can be used when managing your research project, the formal methodology for this is Project Risk Management. In every project there are risks related to schedule and budget as well as technical risks such as essential equipment failures or health and safety risks. The key project risk for students is time as any significant delay could affect your ability to submit your thesis on time . Technical risks should also be addressed and these may originate from your own work or from any interactions that you have with other people. The key is to identify appropriate responses to the particular risks. For example, if you require a particular item to be custom made for you in the workshop, it could be at a time when they are very busy and unable to progress your job quickly enough. The response may be to consider an alternative workshop outside the university (with a different cost impact) or to change the plans so that the workshop activity is earlier in the project. In industry, it is common practice for engineers to front end load the project by spending time at the start of a project identifying technical risks and anticipating what could go wrong and what alternative plans could be followed. This is good practice and will help you progress your project more effectively as well as teaching you a transferable skill. This session will introduce and define the concepts of risk, project risk assessment and project risk management. Students will be presented with a project risk assessment methodology which can be applied to their research project. By the end of the session students should be able to Consider their own research project and its objectives Define the key tasks to achieve the objectives Identify the various risks to each task Rank the risks in terms of probability and consequence Identify responses where appropriate Be able to prepare contingency plans in case risks are realised Document the results of their risk analysis in interim reports and in the thesis where appropriate

Experience shows that researchers who take the time to assess their projects risks and identify practical means of mitigating those risks are much more likely to be able to deliver their project on time and to budget. A very important consequence of this that they are also able to write up and submit their thesis on time.

This training will be delivered by Dr Simon Place (SoE) Please note that this training is currently scheduled to run again in early January 2014