Risk of highway construction projects

The high-risk exposure associated with highway construction projects needs special attention from contractors to analyze and manage their risks. They cannot be eliminated but can be minimized or transferred from one project stakeholder to another. Highway projects carry out higher risk than traditional because they entail high capital outlays and intricate site conditions. The identification, analysis, and allocation of various types of risk are significant aspects of these projects. Therefore, current research identified main risk areas that affect highway projects in company level. It further designed a risk model (R1) that built on these risk areas and their sub-areas to evaluate and prioritize highway projects. Four Chinese case studies (projects A, B, C, and D) were selected to implement the designed model R1 and validate its results. It was shown that project C conquer the highest risk (28.08%); however, project A attain the lowest risk (15.92%). Validation process shows significant variation between model results and the holistic evaluation. It is believed that missing some essential risk areas causes this variation.