Project Management in the Oil and Gas Industry

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Project Management in the Oil and Gas Industry
8.4.1 Methods of Defining Risk
There are many ways to discover and identify risks. We will discuss 
several of them here, but, to be clear, brainstorming is the most traditional 
and practical method. However, the others can also be used in special 
circumstances:
• Brainstorming
• Delphi 
technique
• Nominal group technique
• Crawford 
slip
• Expert 
interviews
• Root cause identification
• Strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) 
analysis
• Checklists
• Analogy
• Documentation 
reviews
8.4.1.1 Brainstorming
Brainstorming is probably the most popular technique for identifying risks. 
It is useful in generating any kind of list by mining the ideas of the partici-
pants. To use the technique, a meeting is called to make a comprehensive 
list of risks. It is important that the purpose of the meeting be explained 
clearly to the participants and it is helpful if they are prepared when they 
arrive at the meeting. The meeting should have between ten and fifteen 
participants. Try to avoid having less than ten participants because there 
might be less interaction among the participants.
If there are more than fifteen people, the meeting tends to be diffi-
cult to control and keep focused. The meeting should take less than two 
hours.
For larger projects, it may be necessary to hold several meetings. 
Each meeting should deal with a separate part of the project and with 
the risks associated with that project part. This will keep the number of 
persons involved to a reasonable size and the meetings will be much more 
productive.
It’s best if the facilitator is not an internal employee or is from a dif-
ferent department, but he or she must have experience for this type of 
project.

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The History of Graphene 297
In the beginning, the facilitator should illustrate the project briefly and 
the illustration chart should be hanged on the wall and should contain a 
time schedule with the main key stages. In addition, the facilitator should 
define the stakeholder, the budget, and the location of the project.
Then, the facilitator and the team leader direct the dialogue to start ask-
ing about the potential risks. They suggest that every expected risk defined 
should be put on a list to be shown to everyone. In this case, there will be 
no discussion for any item. After putting the entire expected potential list 
together, begin the next step but take care from the following:
• Do not stop or reject any idea.
• Never let anyone suggest to remove an idea.
• Do not allow interruption in the discussion.
• Do not go deeply into detail.
Then, start to filter these risk items and merge any two or three risks 
with a general one if similar.
Then, put them in Table 8.1. Define the likelihood of an event occurring 
during a project and, from the table, also define the consequence. Also, 
you will have three alternatives to take the consequence that most of the