identifying risks and risk management strategies

Possible risks and risk management

Risks are something that may happen and if they don’t, will have a positive or negative impact on the project. Analysing, identifying and managing the risk are an important part of the projects success. Risk analysis will be done to identify what may go wrong during the implementation of the project in order to reduce its influence to achieve the project’s goal. For this project, the project staff have conducted a risk analysis as well as examined some research results. The project staff have decided that the risks can be initially identified and divided into three types: (1) risks directly associated with project design and implementation; (2) community risks; and (3) risks from external factors.

- Risks directly associated with the project design and implementation

In terms of risks to the project itself, there may be a possibility of excessive time necessary for building the groups and the number of project staff may have to increase. Issues of implementation time and number of the project staff can be serious weaknesses for dialogical approach. Particularly if this approach is completely new for the project staff. In order to response to this weakness, the project will employ seasoned community development workers who have been working at this community for a long time. The project will provide training courses in dialogical approach such as dialogical skills and community analysis skills for these staff before carrying out the project. This kind of risk management strategies have applied and showed effective in some projects.

- Community risks

For risks to local community, there may be the possibility of lose of collaboration and cooperation between Hue Resource and Environment Department (HRED), Hue Transportation Department (HTD), and Hue Environment and Urban Work Company (HEUWC). There may also be a difficulty while the groups work with other stakeholders in order to establish effective collaboration. This is because the groups are not official organizations which have been established by Vietnamese Government. To be able to address this challenge, the project will look for help from local government, women unions and youth unions to convince other stakeholders to participate in and contribute to environmental problem solving. 

- External risks

In relation to external risks, there may be difficulties while dealing with the environmental problems due to previous regulations of local authority such as local environmental regulations which may differ from district to district. There may also be challenges for the project in undertaking environmental problem solving due to growing city area. To reduce these difficulties, the projects workers will actively negotiate with Hue Environment and Resource Department who is legally responsible for dealing with the environmental issues at the city to get supports from them. The project will partner with other non government organizations such as JBIC to support the project in terms of human and financial resources in case of the project extended.

 - Risk Management Framework

Based on identifying three kinds of risk that may occur while currying out the project, a risk management framework has been developed in order to respond to these risks and make sure the project success.

Risks	Preventive responses	Developmental responses	Corrective responses
Excessive time necessary for building the groups	Using seasoned CDWs	Training CDWs	Partnering with youth unions and women unions while doing the project
Lose of collaboration and cooperation between HRED, HTD, and HEUWC	Working with these institution employers and get an agreement before doing the project	Partnering with youth unions and women unions at these institutions	Linking environmental programmes of these institutions together
Barrier of previous regulations of local authority	Gaining an agreement from local authorities before doing the project	Workshops on environmental issues	Setting up a new regulation on environmental protection