Project risk- A study of Swedish building- and construction companies

Background: Today businesses are largely structured in projects and temporary organizations. In many companies, the ability to pursue projects is decisive for the business efficiency and competitiveness. The risk literature do not discuss identification and handling ofproject risk in building- and construction companies to a large extent, which has led us to investigate how project risk can be treated and handled in Swedish building- and construction companies. Purpose: The purpose of this thesis is to cover and describe business risk in Swedish building- and construction projects with focus on different risks and risk tools, and also to modify a model for evaluating the business risk maturity. Realization: This thesis has both traces of a case study and a cross-section study and examines eight different companies that are active in the building- and construction business. The empiric section is mainly constituted by interviews with coworkers from the examined companies. Result: The results show that the examined companies apply an extensive risk awareness in the projects and judge the risk by using a integrated systematic risk business, which includes identification, assessment, handling and control of risks. The thesis also includes a compilation and categorization of the mostly used tools according to the risk literature. Mathematical risk tools are used too a little extent. Instead, great trust is put on the experience of the project coworkers. By applying a risk maturity model, the business risk of an organization can be evaluated in an uncomplicated way, but the results show that characteristics as risk awareness and risk culture can not be measured and judged objectively, which means that these characteristics may not be given too much importance in the model. In spite of this, the results imply that the risk maturity can be measured with the help of this model