Schedule risk analysis for project control with risk interactions

Abstract Due to the uncertainty and risks in projects, Schedule Risk Analysis (SRA) has been developed to measure the activity sensitivity for taking corrective actions during project control. With the growing complexity of projects, the interaction between risks has received increasing research attention in project management, conceptualized as a risk interaction network. In such a network, the risk can affect the project objective not only through its occurrence but also by triggering interrelated risks. However, previous studies on SRA were mostly dedicated to designing activity sensitivity metrics using the project network, ignoring the source of activity risks, which may result in inaccurate activity sensitivity information and invalid corrective actions. In this paper, we integrate the risk interaction network with the project network for schedule risk analysis and project control under risk interactions. Subsequently, a novel interaction-oriented sensitivity metric is proposed and a simulation-based control model is developed to facilitate corrective action decisions. Finally, a computational experiment is conducted to investigate the ability of the proposed metric in identifying sensitive activities under risk interaction. In addition, the experiment also tests the performance of three activity selection strategies, namely preventive strategy, interventive strategy, and hybrid strategy. The results show the proposed activity sensitivity metric not only enhances the control effectiveness but also exhibits remarkable reliability across both serial projects and parallel projects. The results also indicate that a mix of strategies is preferred depending on the project network structure and the timing of control action taking.