The construction site manager's impact on risk management performance

Abstract: Risk management in construction is traditionally based on the experience and individual judgements made by site managers, especially in smaller projects. The site managers in construction should also be regarded as key individuals, with a prevailing picture of being tough and possibly also risk prone in their behaviour .This study follows up a previous study by the researcher which found that the management system itself does not have such a large influence on the way risks are managed at a construction site. The construction site manager, as an individual, is regarded as having a greater impact on the project performance related to risk. The question raised in this study is therefore what individual impact the site managers have on the effects of risk management. To be able to answer this question, it is also important to determine the extent to which it is possible to measure the effects of risk management at construction site level. The results of this study present a model for measuring the effects of risk management on site and at individual level in a construction project, using specific indicators. These indicators are related to profit, safety, quality performance and predictability. Further, this model has been tested using authentic data from a construction company. These data do not reveal strong correlations between the chosen indicators and, as a result, reliance on profit is dominant. The individual impact on risk management performance focuses on two aspects of the character of an individual; personality and background information, such as education, age and experience. Personality traits measured by the PAPI test reveal three significant traits that correlate to economic performance on site. They are need for change, need to be forceful and social harmoniser. None of these traits was, however, found to be related to risk management performance. Moreover, the characteristic personality of construction site managers is compared with that of managers from the general labour market to see whether there are any significant differences that could help to explain the prevailing picture of the character of construction site managers. The most powerful difference is the trait of need for change, indicating that construction site managers are more conservative than other managers. In this comparison, it is not possible to assign attributes to site managers as being more risk prone than other managers. Instead, a picture emerges of individuals who focus on details, are keen on following routines and also have a work pace indicating stress tolerance. The conclusions from this study are that there are indicators that ought to work as indicators of risk management performance, but the amount of data required to find significant correlations needs to be vast. It is also concluded from this study that, due to the site managers' aversion to change, they remain at the less demanding rule-based level of problem solving instead of moving up to the more time-consuming, knowledge-based level of problem solving. It is also concluded that site managers from construction are not more risk prone than managers from the general labour market. The final conclusion is that the individual impact on the effects of risk management is fairly small. There are other issues, possibly related to organisational context, that have a greater impact.