Department of civil and environmental engineering, Kuwait university, P.O. Box: 5969 Safat, 13060 Kuwait

Abstract EN

This current study presents the considerable risks confronted by construction firms engaged in public projects located at the State of Kuwait and quantifies their probability of occurrence and severity.

The identified risks were categorized into two main categories including country and project risks.

The country risks were further subcategorized to five categories comprising stability, economy, regulatory, community, and environmental.

On the other hand, project risks were classified into engineering, production, monetary, and administration risks.

These risks were then quantified through a survey distributed to private contractors who had experience in Public Project in the State of Kuwait.

The overall Importance Indicator (II) was computed for the ten risk groups in terms of their probability of occurrence and severity on project cost and schedule.

The association between the (II) of the probability of occurrence and (II) of the severity from two aspects was inspected and classified using the Risk Assessment Tool (RAT).

In conclusion, the study shows that all of the ten risk groups were of low level.

The intensive evaluation of the study results showed that most significant risks were Price Inflation (E1), Resources Restrictions (E2), Resources Quality (E3), Public Establishments Regulations and Laws (R2), Permits and Licenses (R3), Contract Harsh Clauses (R4) Inclement Weather (N1), Performance of Subcontractors (P6), Performance of Preselected Subcontractors (P7), Insufficient Project Duration (P9), Subcontractors Coordination (A6), Transmittals Process (A8), and Major Changes (M4).

Although this study focused on quantifying risks in the Public Projects in the State of Kuwait, the recognized risks and their importance can direct contractors looking to work in construction projects located in the Middle East and North Africa region, particularly in countries that have abundant of natural resources but experience some to extreme internal instability.

These firms can utilize the RAT developed in this research to determine expected risk probability of occurrence and severity on their project performance and develop appropriate mitigation measures.