Disruption management approaches are into two groups; the known and unknown sources. The known captures predictable sources of disruptions whereas the unknown are the uncertainties. Under the known source, approaches such as risk and opportunity management are employed. Under the unknown sources, change, uncertainty and crisis management approaches are employed. Figure 2-1 summarises the discussion.
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Figure 2-1 Disruption management approaches in construction 2.3.1 Approaches for managing disruptions from known sources
The challenge of the approaches under the known source is the inability to fully manage shock, develop capabilities and ensure overall project recovery. This is because the approaches focus on increasing abilities to predict the threat or opportunity in order to manage them to avoid shock.
2.3.1.1 Risk Management
The management of risk, also known as a threat (Carr & Tah, 2001) or a measurable uncertainty (Hillson, 2003) is by first predicting the occurrence of threat accurately and developing strategies to cater for the identified threat (Perry & Hayes, 1985;
Qazi et al., 2016). Following the identification stage, the other stages in managing risk which are risk analysis, response and implementation and monitoring and reviewing (Perry & Hayes, 1985; Qazi et al., 2016) are dependent on the threat identified. For example, risk identification stage categorises and assess the threat associated with a project (Al-Bahar & Crandall, 1991). This is done by extracting or imagining the potential future events that could affect (either negatively of positively) the attainment of defined objectives (Loosemore et al., 2006). These are however, identified to be subjectively influenced based on project personal interest and experiences and thus, challenge risk identification (Loosemore et al., 2006). Thus, any unidentified threat is not catered for and could greatly affect the project through increased shock despite strategies set up to proactively identify risk (example;
recruiting people with creative ability, training those without, idea elicitation CONSEQUENCE
SOURCE
DISRUPTION
KNOWN
UNKNOWN
Vulnerability reduction -Change management -Uncertainty
-Crisis Management
Shock avoidance
- Risk management -Opportunity management
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techniques, forecasting, soft system analysis, brainstorming, electronic brainstorming, influence diagram, fault tree analysis and simulations (Loosemore et al., 2006;
Sanderson, 2012)).
Also, the risk analysis stage is influenced by the risk identified. This is because, any unidentified risk which has a potential to cause disruption but not quantified in accordance to its tendency and severity of magnitude (that is, its impact) is not covered under this stage (Perry & Hayes, 1985). Similarly approaches to respond to risks such as avoidance, reduction and elimination, transfer and sharing of residual risk (Perry & Hayes, 1985; Serpella et al., 2014) are not planned for the unidentified threat and thus, increases shock to the project when it occurs. This is due to the lack of awareness and thus channelling resources to manage other areas where risk and opportunities have been identified.
Furthermore, unforeseen risks do not have an implementation, monitoring and reviewing plan and thus, disrupts works if they occur. This is because this latter stage in managing risk ensures that parties involved; do as planned and follow response decision chosen (Carr & Tah, 2001; Loosemore et al., 2006; Akintoye &
MacLeod, 1997). To date, risk management approaches, either manually (example Perry & Hayes, 1985) or technologically (Dey, Kinch & Ogunlana, 2007) both follow the same fundamental approach (that is, risk analysis, response and implementation and monitoring and reviewing).
2.3.1.2 Opportunity management
Opportunity is a positive perception of risk (Olsson, 2007). The major difference between opportunity and risk management is that opportunity management focuses on positive consequence of the threat instead of negative consequences that risk does (Olsson, 2007). Opportunity management also suffers from the inability to manage shock and develop capabilities. It has similar stages to risk management (outlined in section 2.3.1.1) and these are: opportunity identification, analysis, response, implementation, monitoring and reviewing (Ward & Chapman, 2003b).
However, under response, opportunity management differs. Risk management responds by avoiding, transferring, mitigating and accepting. Opportunity management on the other hand responds by exploiting, sharing, enhancing and ignoring (Hillson, 2002). The exploit strategy is to ensure that opportunities definitely
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happen in order to realise its benefits (Hillson, 2002). Similar to transfer in risk, sharing seeks to partner with the party best able to manage opportunity. Also, contrary to mitigation in risk management, enhancing seeks to increase the impact of the opportunity to acquire maximum benefit (Hillson, 2002).
The limitation of risk and opportunity management which is the inability to manage shock, develop capabilities and manage uncertainties is aimed to be resolved by approaches for managing unknown sources. However, they are not wholly covered but instead minimise the impact of shock.
2.3.2 Approaches for managing disruptions from unknown sources
These manage disruption caused by the unknown sources by setting out measures to be followed prior to the disruption or employ risk management processes to reduce vulnerability.
2.3.2.1 Change management
The management of change, which is a deviation from planned works is by continually renewing the projects direction and structure, to respond to internal and external sources of disruptions (Motawa et al., 2007; Chen et al., 2015). Change is managed by providing a proactive approach in reducing impact of shock but first seeks to forecast possible changes (similar to risk management) (Hayes, 2014).
The difference between the change management approaches and risk opportunity management is the generic processes set out early on the project to manage change.
Motawa et al. (2007) develops a generic process for change management. This generic process comprise; start up, identify and evaluate, approval and propagation and post stage. At the start-up stage is where a generic definition of proactive requirements needed to manage the change and respond readily is developed (Motawa et al., 2007) prior to the change. This generic process is aimed at minimising shock through the sequential steps it provides (Hayes, 2014) without focussing on developing the capacity of project to absorb shock.
From the above, change management process does minimise the impact of shock first, by utilising the requirements provided at the start up stage. This is successful, provided the processes enable the resolution of disruption. However, the exact requirements are not outlined. In cases where unknown sources of disruption are beyond those perceived or allowed for, change management fails (Ward & Chapman,
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2003b; Pritchard & PMP, 2014). Then, uncertainty and crisis management approaches are employed.
2.3.2.2 Uncertainty management
Under uncertainty management, the focus is an event that if occurs, will have an effect on the achievement of the project’s objectives (Hillson, 2002). Uncertainty management deals with the unknown sources of disruption. Strategies to manage uncertainties are (1) incorporating strategies to understand uncertainties (Paté-Cornell, 1996; Pritchard & PMP, 2014), (2) ignoring it or (3) reacting to uncertainties as they occur (Paté-Cornell, 1996).
Incorporating strategies to understand uncertainties aims at increasing awareness in order to minimise the shock disruptions cause. This increase in awareness is limited to the potential uncertainties, thus risk. Increase in awareness is enhanced by promoting communication amongst the team (Teller, Kock & Gemünden, 2014). Also, uncertainties are ignored if the impact to the overall project aim is insignificant.
Furthermore, reacting to uncertainties as they occur leads to the utilisation of risk, opportunity and change management strategies. The approaches then lead to reducing vulnerability by reacting to it, therefore, ignores developing general capacity and hence does not focus on overall project recovery.
At the initial stage of reacting to uncertainties, projects are vulnerable (Yang et al., 2014). When these available approaches to manage uncertainty fail due to severity of disruptions, projects are disrupted and thus, go into crisis which if not managed swiftly leads to failure.
2.3.2.3 Crisis management
Crisis is an intense difficult state (Boin & McConnell, 2007). Within projects, crisis management focuses on dealing with problems which disrupt the works. This is to prevent the project from further being disrupted. Approaches to managing crisis include utilising pre-developed plan (similar to change management’s start-up stage), employing command centre strategy and training (Loosemore, 1999; Kerzner, 2013).
The pre-developed plan is issued to the project to act on in order to buy time for the command centre (experts) to develop a strategy and also minimise the initial shocking impact it has on the team. Training techniques in crisis management focus
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on developing ability to predict the exact consequences of the crisis and its response (Boin & McConnell, 2007).
These crisis management approaches are critiqued because they oversimplify the severity of crisis. Despite the critiques, recent strategies to manage crisis continue to oversimplify its severity, thus making projects more vulnerable (Kerzner, 2013) during crisis. This therefore leaves a significant gap within the management of disruptions for cases where these crisis management strategies do not work (example severe uncertain situation). Also, crisis creates special problems of social adjustment, behavioural instability, information management and conflict management (Loosemore, 1999; Love & Smith, 2016) however, these have been ignored in current crisis management approaches and not catered for in projects. As such, the development of holistic approach in managing disruptions which identifies and develops the functional capacity of projects, resolves problems crisis creates, does not oversimplify crisis and overall project recovery; resilience is required.