DCMA DECM 06A102a

Are Risk Activities Represented in the Schedule?

“Opportunity and risk come in pairs.”

- Bangambiki Habyarimana

As you identify risks that can derail your schedule (from both a cost and time standpoint), you’ll want to consider work that could be done to mitigate those risks.

Let’s start with a couple of definitions. Risk mitigation planning is the process of developing options and actions to enhance opportunities and reduce threats to project objectives. Risk mitigation implementation is the process of executing risk mitigation actions. A risk register is used to identify potential risks in a project to stay on top of potential issues that can derail intended outcomes. Opportunities to reduce cost and time may also be included in the risk register.

Risk mitigation implementation represents work, of course, and this particular metric’s purpose is to ensure that the work has been recorded in the schedule.

Suppose an engineering supervisor is instructed to review work being performed to ensure that safety procedures are being followed. By doing so, she’s mitigating the risk of a job site accident causing delays and cost overruns. This work is part of the risk register. For a milestone to be complete, her signoff is required. This inspection is discrete work and should be recorded in the schedule as well. If DCMA sees it in the risk register but doesn’t find it in the schedule, it will be counted in this metric.

DCMA calculates this as a ratio (percentage).

The denominator is:

the total number of approved risk mitigation activities that require incorporation into the IMS per the EVM system description, approved risk management plan, and/or risk mitigation process/procedure.

The numerator is:

any approved risk mitigation activities that cannot be traced to the IMS.

In other words, DCMA is looking for the percentage of risk mitigation activities that are described in the risk and opportunities register that do not show up in the schedule.

The metric fails if more than 10% of the activities are missing from the schedule.

Next steps

Where there are risk activities that have not been incorporated into the IMS, investigate the reason why and correct as necessary.

14 Point Analyzer

(This check was not in the 14 Point Assessment and is not supported in the Steelray Project Analyzer.)