USING MONTE CARLO SIMULATION TO CREATE A RANKED CHECK LIST OF RISKS IN A PORTFOLIO OF RAILWAY CONSTRUCTION PROJECTS

When introducing quantified risk assessments at a South African state-owned freight company, a skills gap was found during the identification and quantified risk analysis. To help with risk identification, a checklist of risks for railway construction projects was developed. The basis of this checklist was 38 individual railway construction project risk registers that were collated into a single risk register. After the risks had been cleaned up and classified, a Monte Carlo simulation using @Risk software was done that produced a ranked check list of risks. This list of risks is valuable because subject matter experts developed it, and can be used as a risk identification checklist by stakeholders in similar projects. The simulation results also showed that project scope is an influencing factor on the ranking of risks.