How Certified Enterprise Risk Managers Can Make a Crucial Contribution to the Success of New Business Projects?

We take and manage risk to seek reward and achieve objectives. All projects involve risk, some more so than others, but risk should be understood as meaning uncertainty, which covers both threats and opportunities. Inbuilt into every project planning process should be the creation of a project Risk Management Plan (RMP), or a subset of the project management plan, to define how the project team will take and manage risk. An RMP should be put together by a project risk coordinator, who is appointed early in the project’s life by the project manager as the project team structure is being defined. Whether the risk coordinator is a full-time or part-time role on your project depends on the project’s nature and size. Many high-risk large projects employ a full-time risk manager. Whether it is a full or part-time role, the coordinator needs to liaise with all project disciplines and be the glue ensuring that managing risk is done cohesively and collaboratively, not in functional silos. If your organisation has a central risk function, they should support the risk coordinator. They can provide guidance for the RMP and perhaps include them in any risk champions’ network to provide mentoring and skills development.

THE PLAN

Risk managers need to include four critical elements in the RMP. First, set out how all disciplines/ teams on the project will manage ri