The Impact of Utilizing Expertise to Project Risk and Performance

Abstract

Organizations have had difficulty in finding good project and risk management techniques that will deliver high performing projects. Research has identified common risks that occur on projects, but previous research has had difficulty coming up with reliable methods to mitigate those risks. However, the Best Value Approach (BVA) has proven to be effective in minimizing risk and increasing project performance. The crux of the BVA is the utilization of experts to minimize project risk. The BVA approach is unique from other project management methodologies which focus on increasing communication, collaboration and decision making. Previous research shows that client stakeholders are the cause of the majority of project risks, while the expert vendors usually do not cause risk on a project. It has been observed that expert vendors are able to minimize client stakeholder risk by transparent planning and tracking. Using case study research, an expert contractor’s project is analyzed to determine the impact of using the BVA project management methodology to minimize project risk. As a result, the contractor did not cause any risk based on time and cost and helped the client minimize their risk. The research identifies eight risk mitigating actions the contractor applied through the BVA. The majority of the risk mitigating actions were performed primarily in the preparation and preplanning phases of the project.