Management of risk in delivering complex research and development projects

Management of risk in delivering complex research and development projects

Risk management continues to be a major feature of the project management of large construction, engineering, technological, and research and development projects in an attempt to reduce uncertainties and to achieve project success. Managing risk is an important task in identifying and quantifying the uncertainties inherent in complex research and development projects. Managing such risks better aids minimization of threats and maximization of opportunities in such projects, and therefore better assists such projects to realize their potentials while minimizing exposure to potentially adverse outcomes.

Working in Research and Development Centre of the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces is challenging as new developments are continues since the tasked projects include a high degree of risks which may potentially interfere with successful completion of these projects. Therefore, a scientific approach and developing process improvements for identifying and managing the risks that exist in these projects are needed within the context of the UAE environment.

Thus, this study outlines a research of Management of Risk in Delivering Complex Research and Development Projects. The research is based on a real case study focusing on risk management in the Research and Development Center of the United Arab Emirates Armed Forces. Although managing risks of R&D environments have been studied for many years, researches on risks associated with R&D of military environments are still relatively low and almost scarce in the UAE, giving importance to such a study to fill in the literature. This will fill a void in the literature, where current studies fall short of studying these risks in the UAE Military. The benefits yield a theoretical framework for managing risks that fits R&D in the UAE military and similar R&D environments.

The thesis highlights the research purpose, objectives, and motivation together with the statement of the problem, the current status of the proposed research organization, and the research questions. This is followed by a literature review and theoretical background of risk management in general as well as in R&D, military, and UAE, and, consequently, the significance of the proposed research. Then, a brief of methodology aspects along with the research ethics is presented. The obtained results and findings are then presented followed by its discussions, and, therefore, yield to highlight the conclusion and recommendations grasped.

The main research findings grasped that the risk factors along the risk mitigation methodologies of complex research and developments projects of the armed forces tend to be as same as with civilian R&D projects although there is always a place for new and updated practices and methodologies. The research results and discussions led to the development of a risk model for the UAE R&D projects in the environment of the armed forces.

This risk model, the results, and the limitations of this study may provide new openings to interested organizations, students, and researchers in future qualitative and quantitative studies to test, update, and generalize the model to the wider R&D community in the UAE.