A study of risk cognition archetypes of professionals in multi-disciplinary construction consultancies

Construction consulting organisations are affected by both enterprise and project risks. Enterprise risks are relatively stable over a period and managed by higher level business managers, and are therefore, more controllable through the operational cycles of the organisation. In contrast, the requirements for managing risks at project level not only change from project to project, but they need to be collectively managed by various project managers and individual design engineers within project teams. This is especially relevant for large consulting organisations as they deal with a considerable number of multi-disciplinary projects. Current studies show that the existing risk evaluation techniques have limited use in supporting construction practitioners especially consulting enterprises, whose risk assessments are based on more cognitive and intuitive approaches. Risk decisions therefore, rely more on personal experience and subjective judgement rather than formal techniques. This often leads to potentially undesirable outcomes in enterprises performances. For the risk management needs of such consulting enterprises to be met, research into how these cognitive and intuitive approaches can be harnessed to transform and improve the risk judgement of construction consultants who are dealing with projects would be invaluable. The study on which this thesis is based addresses this gap in the knowledge of risk management by focusing on the judgement of professionals in multi-disciplinary construction consultancies. Such a focus should help establish possible evidence of systematic variation or not, and architypes in the enterprise risk cognition of such professionals. The essential argument of focusing on cognition is that different categories of professional reflect distinguishable levels of cognition. The different levels of cognition imply different support for the way they can achieve effective risk identification and mitigation.

The investigation established systematic differences in the enterprise risk cognition of Business Managers when compared to Project Teams comprised of Project Managers and technical staff at different levels. Besides the dominant findings, the study also identified personal risk proficiency factors such as familiarity, exposure and experience of risks, the level of control on risks, site secondment experience, as well as personality traits such as openness to experience, risk conscientiousness, networking, social skills, and agreeableness which positively affect the consultants’ level of risk perception.

The factors that emerged from results of the analyses open up a new avenue to explore the impact of their incorporation into the practice of risk management, and how they can help develop consultants’ risk cognition abilities. Further, factors such as level of responsibility, experience, attaining minimum education, professional qualifications and secondment to both site or client offices were found to help improve consultant’s risk knowledge. A model for exploring the essential factors from the study is targeted at policymakers and practices within the industry to enable the enhancement of risk cognition for professionals.