Development of a Risk Assessment Model for Oman Construction Industry

Oman as one of the Arabian Gulf countries which have invested billions of dollars in the construction industries, infrastructural services and real estate, but it is clearly identified that risk assessment was not applied for once on these awarded contracts. Lack of knowledge and awareness of risk management or assessment procedures in the construction industry in Oman caused additional cost and time delay in most of the awarded construction projects. This paper aimed at developing a model for risk assessment in the Oman construction industry to save huge amounts of millions of money wasted due to this problem. A field survey of semi-structured questionnaire with face-to-face interviews was carried out in the Oman construction industry including public, contractors and consultants. The research approach relies on data collected from primary and secondary sources. Combination of quantitative and qualitative data analysis was used in analysing the data for the Model development. The risk factors in the Oman construction industry varies from one category to another, the risk factors in government category are more than the consultant category and contractor's category. Overall, the Oman construction industry has no very high risk factors, which means it has good opportunities for investment. It is expected that the output of this research will have a good and beneficial contribution to save time and money for both public and private sectors in Oman due to expected awareness and improvements in the risk assessment procedures.