Managing Risk in Projects, Fundamentals of Risk Management Series

Dr David Hillson

Gower, 2009

ISBN 978056608867

There are two things wrong with David’s book on Managing Risk in Projects: The title and the size. The title gives the impression that this is a basic introduction to the topic and the size (its only 96 pages), suggests that you couldn’t get much from a book this small.

Nothing can be further from the truth. This book is in fact a little gem of a book, bursting with useful information on every page. What David has done is to take the main approaches to risk management (PMI, APM, IRM ANZ, British Standard, OGC, etc) and make extremely useful comparisons in their definitions and approaches to risk from a project perspective. All of this is done in the first two chapters!

Having such a wide range of definitions and approaches, the question then arises “can we develop and implement a generic risk management process that suits most circumstances?” David tackles this topic with ease. The generic process presented in the book is usefully cross-referenced to the other standards, demonstrating how easy it would be to tune the generic process for most projects.

The remaining half of the book deals with the problems of making the process work. As we all know, the best process in the world won’t help if you don’t have the right people with the right attitude. The first of these making it work chapters (Risk and People) has in the main been summarised from David’s other publications “Understanding and Managing Risk Attitude” and “Managing Group Risk Attitude” and is a good introduction to the topic of the psychological aspects of risk management. The book concludes with useful approaches to making it work and an integrating into the wider organisation.

I believe there is a wide audience for this book ranging from those governing projects through to those managing and supporting projects. Anyone interested in implementing or improving their current approach to risk would also find this a useful addition to their library.

Reviewed by John Fisher MIRM

IRM members can obtain a 35% discount if they purchase the book from Gower Publishing. To find out how to claim the discount go to the member only area.