Risk Assessment for Projects of Energy Recovery from Solid Waste : Proposal of a Base Model for Risk Management

Sammanfattning: Risk management has been applied within projects in different industries and companies in the past years. However, the knowledge that was generated by literature is about industries such as construction or IT. But inside the waste management and energy recovery industry, there has not been a clear approach for managing, and many authors claim that this gap in literature should be studied and analyzed. Although, it is known that within traditional project management there are different models or approaches to consider. Nonetheless, these models do not analyze specific issues related to the industry, allowing this research to be carried out. Based on that, this project degree aims to facilitate the understanding and application of risk management, for both academia and industry through the design of a model that is applicable in any project within the energy recovery sector. Thus, a literature review was conducted to present what is currently known about risk management, presenting models that can be used for constructing a proposed model, in which a theoretical framework was developed.  Furthermore, this research presents a mixed strategy of qualitative and quantitative methods to gather empirical data which is needed to support or compare what is written by different authors. Thus, semi-structured interviews were performed to get perspectives and insights of domain experts in project, risk, waste management, and energy recovery. As this project was conducted with an external partner, snowball and convenience sampling tactics were applied due to the ease to reach consultants from the company and contacts in other parts of the world. However, due to the pandemic many of the candidates to interview could not join or declined the request what is a limitation for the study, Additionally, a matrix was sent to the participants to be quantified (rank risks) and suggest actions to minimize risks. As a result of this research are that experts claim that the proposed model can be applied in any project within the field, but it can be considered just as a base model because in some cases it will need some adaptations. Also, the respondents agreed that in the projects, size should not be a decision impediment to apply a model, however, the scope may influence the budget, number of people involved, and technology to be implemented. Finally, the political framework of the geographical location where the project will be held will highly influence the likelihood and impact of the risks. This master thesis opens the possibilities to conduct further research in different areas such as the influence of political issues, organizational behavior, and studies where the success rates of the base model can be quantified.