QUANT: Latest Release of PL Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) Methodology

QUANT is the new version of our Quantitative Risk Assessment (QRA) methodology. Senior Consultant, Werner Meyer, has led the charge in the research aligning our methodology to best practices in risk quantification along with the likes of NASA and the US Department of Defense.

Project costs and time overruns are abundant on projects. These typically increase as projects become more complex and uncertainties increase.  Typically project teams deal with uncertainty by making cost and time contingency allowances and then by managing unforeseen events as they occur.  These actions are often based on expert judgement which tends to give inconsistent results and may even introduce additional risk.

QRAs offer a better approach. They provide a scientific method for quantifying uncertainty, determining contingency, and guiding teams to make better-informed decisions about projects.

In the past our methodology mainly included guidelines by the AACE International and the Project Management Institute (PMI). We have now expanded our research about risk quantification to include best practices developed by several international organisations such as NASA, the US Department of Defense, financial and insurance organisations, and a number of leading authors in quantitative risk management from healthcare, technology, and environmental projects.

Our QUANT methodology distills learnings from more than 190 QRAs and research of international leading practices into a streamlined process for risk quantification.  QUANT consists of three modules: the project QRA module, the Business Case QRA module, and the QRA Control module which is aimed at controlling contingency and risk management during project execution.

These modules address four pillars of uncertainty in project, i.e., cost uncertainty, schedule uncertainty, systemic uncertainties, and project risks.

There are two main reasons we updated our QRA methodology; firstly, after analysing many projects over the past five years, we have learned a tremendous amount about the challenges that project teams face with understanding and making provision for uncertainty when they develop cost estimates and schedules.  We have included these lessons to better guide project teams in the process leading up to the QRA. Secondly, we saw the need to expand our risk quantification research to include best practices developed by several international organisations and not just the ACCE and the PMI.

We recently held a webinar in which Marelize de Jongh (Head of ProjectLink Consulting) and Werner Meyer presented our updated QRA methodology, QUANT.  They discussed the four pillars of a successful QRA, our updated systemic risk assessment process, and how QRA results should be used in decision making.

Find the live replay of the webinar below: