Investigation of the Risk Factors Causing Safety and Delay Issues in Oil and Gas Pipeline Construction Projects

Building the new Oil and Gas Pipelines (OGPs) without analyzing the potential Risk Factors (RFs) that influence the safety of these pipelines causes time and cost overrun in these projects. Quantifying the impact of the RFs on the duration of the projects is essential to provide an accurate estimate about the project duration and recognize the potential RFs that causing delay and safety issues in the projects. Identifying the RFs in the projects via literature review and analyzing their impact on the delivery time of the projects via a questionnaire survey and computer-based risk analysis model are the key methods adopted in the study. This study uses the Monte Carlo Simulation algorithm, which is integrated within @Risk Simulator to quantify the delay impact of the RFs. The @Risk simulator has the flexibility to integrated different risk distribution methods for each RF, which helps in overcoming the limitations of using ASTA Powerproject risk simulator to quantify the delay the projects, as done in a prior study. The @Risk simulator is useful in analyzing the delay in each task, working stage and overall project duration. The results provided by risk simulator is useful in understanding the sensitivity and the criticality of each RF that might cause delay issues in the projects. The outcomes of this study will help to the stakeholders, the decision-makers and the policy-makers of OGP projects to make sound decisions and enable them to take preventive actions of risk management while starting a new OGP project, which helps in minimizing the delay in the projects