This article is one in a series of articles about project risks and how to safely navigate those risks when working in foreign cultures and mainly in the developing world… Hopefully it will give you a head start when you take the leap and work in foreign countries.
Background: I had recently arrived to Cambodia to take charge over a project to build infrastructure with a budget of tens of millions of US Dollars. I had many years of experience doing the same type of projects with much larger budget so it all seemed very doable. Little did I know what the future would show me…
I will never forget the first risk analysis we did after I arrived. The project team had finished brainstorming risks when I started reading the sticky notes on the whiteboard.
I stopped dead in my tracks when I came to a sticky note with the words “Risk for landmines in most of the area where we will build towers”.
I asked “land mines – do we have landmines in our area?”
Yes, one of the local engineers nodded and said “we have several millions of unexploded landmines since the 70’s when Pol Pot and the Red Khmers ruled our country. Walk outside the beaten path and you might very well lose your leg or even your life”.
We were not talking about “silly” risks like delays or going over budget. We now talked about the risk to die..
That was a big wakeup call for me, I knew about Pol Pot but it felt so long time ago and now everything seemed so peaceful on the streets in Phnom
Penh.
This was obviously not a risk to accept “as-is” and it had to be mitigated ASAP. The site surveys would start soon and we had no time to lose.
We found out that a Canadian NGO had maps over land that was cleared and not cleared from mines. They could also assist in sweeping for mines and clear land that wasn’t safe to enter.
Luckily no one was hurt due to land mines in the project but other unfortunate things happened in the course of the project.
This case was only one of many other cases of risks I didn’t have in my “book of risks” before coming to Cambodia. Over and over again I came in situations with risks types I’ve never encountered before.
Lessons learned:
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- Make sure you have staff with local knowledge in your project team even if they may be less experienced. Even If I had much more experience I was still in the hands of the local staff. Not only about the land mines but for many other risks and issues as well
- Keep an open mind and think outside the box for potential risks. Use a checklist with common risks but don’t limit yourself to the risks on the checklist
- Study the history and current situation before you start a project in unknown territories. I failed to do that before I arrived to Cambodia
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Have you experienced similar awakenings in your project? Share your experiences in the comments below!
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