Risk Management and Budget Linkage

 

“Please make yourself available for a training on risk management or else be ready to be replaced by someone who will. This project will not fail with you!”  My team members will hear this the moment risks are ignored. I will demand that risk management be given the same attention as time, scope and cost management when undertaking a project.

Serious consideration of risks in project management is a MUST or else one has to be ready for shutdown, to abandon work, to be charged for breach of contract or to miss the opportunity for a better project implementation. Positive risks (opportunities) should be embraced and exploited while negative risks (threats) should be avoided, if not should be mitigated to ensure that impact is manageable.  

I don’t like negative surprises especially in my line of work.  Managing the organization’s limited finances taught me to be overly meticulous of project proposals especially the portion “budgetary requirements”.  Is everything included and do estimates reflect cost escalation, delivery charges,  taxes and time delays are just two of the questions I ask when evaluating a project proposal’s budgetary requirements to ensure sufficiency and accuracy of the appropriation, completion and functional use of the project.    I cannot be complacent because the burden of looking for additional budget/funds to complete a project rests on my shoulders and any miscalculations/mismanagement of project variables will affect the cost variable. 

Risks are expected in every project that is why contingency/back-up plans are crafted.  Deviations may happen but should not be beyond the acceptable variance or else the project will fail and objectives will not be met as the above picture I label as "Half Concrete, Half Budget in Progress".   I cannot be happy with this as I am always on top of threats because I am badYet frendly.