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Risk project wins regional construction award

04/05/2017

A pioneering risk management project co-ordinated by the University of Wolverhampton has scooped a prize win in the Innovation Category at this year’s West Midlands Celebrating Construction Awards 2017.

‘Risk Management Software System for SMEs in the Construction Industry’ (RiMaCon) is a four year Marie Curie Actions – Industry-Academia Partnerships and Pathways project that ran from April 2013 to March 2017 involving  academic organisations and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) from the UK, Czech Republic and Italy.

The €921,000 project was fully funded on the basis of positive evaluation from the European Commission with expertise provided by researchers from the University of Wolverhampton and Computors Limited in the UK, the University of West Bohemia in the Czech Republic and Vettorazzo Costruzioni in Italy who participated in the development, testing and validation of the prototype software.

Chike Oduoza, Professor in Process and Manufacturing Engineering in the Faculty of Science and Engineering at the University, said:  “SMEs in the construction sector especially face daily exposure to a wide variety of business risks, whilst largely operating without a risk management system in place. There is abundant evidence to confirm that SMEs are underperforming due to their inability to effectively manage operational risk challenges that face them on a daily basis.

“The aim of the RiMaCon consortium was to address this problem by developing a prototype robust risk management software system that proactively identified, analysed and managed a large variety of risks faced by SMEs in the construction sector to help improve productivity based on risk identification, analysis and proactive management.”

The affordable software is capable of continuous assessment and evaluates, monitors and reviews both imminent and impending risk with a view to eliminating or minimising its impact. Project leaders are exploring the possibility of commercialising the web-based product and making it available to SMEs on an open sourced network.

The project was shortlisted in the Innovation Category and the awards ceremony took place at the International Convention Centre in Birmingham on Friday 28th April 2017.

ENDS

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Date Issued: 3rd May 2017

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