No one goes to hospital to get sick. Hospitals are the places we seek treatment, to get better, have procedures, get vaccinated or visit an ailing friend or relative. And yet, once in hospital, as a patient or visitor alike, we can become susceptible to an increased risk of infection from a most unlikely source; construction dust. Hospitals are under constant pressure to upgrade, embrace new technology, expand their aging facilities and attract more patients. This has resulted with construction and maintenance works becoming a mainstay in operational hospitals. And often, there will be several projects underway at the same time. Some will replace or repair aging infrastructure, others will implement new technologies, install specialised equipment or seek to enhance their patient facilities. And whilst hospitals modernise, they are required to remain operational and provide an ongoing, consistent and safe patient care service. This mix, health care with construction works is risky as a lot can go wrong and a lot often does. So how should construction work in operational hospitals be undertaken to ensure the ongoing safety and wellbeing of patients and occupants alike. How can disruption be minimised? How can the complexity of the works be more effectively managed? Are there specific focus areas? What data is required to gauge compliance and performance? How can construction issues and problems be quickly identified, rectified and not repeated? And, as construction works proceeds, what is required to ensure no harm is caused? In answering these questions, this book provides an insight into how construction risks can be effectively controlled whilst works are progressed, to be completed safely, without incident or disruption in operational hospitals.

No one goes to hospital to get sick. Hospitals are the places we seek treatment, to get better, have procedures, get vaccinated or visit an ailing friend or relative. And yet, once in hospital, as a patient or visitor alike, we can become susceptible to an increased risk of infection from a most unlikely source; construction dust. Hospitals are under constant pressure to upgrade, embrace new technology, expand their aging facilities and attract more patients. This has resulted with construction and maintenance works becoming a mainstay in operational hospitals. And often, there will be several projects underway at the same time. Some will replace or repair aging infrastructure, others will implement new technologies, install specialised equipment or seek to enhance their patient facilities. And whilst hospitals modernise, they are required to remain operational and provide an ongoing, consistent and safe patient care service. This mix, health care with construction works is risky as a lot can go wrong and a lot often does. So how should construction work in operational hospitals be undertaken to ensure the ongoing safety and wellbeing of patients and occupants alike. How can disruption be minimised? How can the complexity of the works be more effectively managed? Are there specific focus areas? What data is required to gauge compliance and performance? How can construction issues and problems be quickly identified, rectified and not repeated? And, as construction works proceeds, what is required to ensure no harm is caused? In answering these questions, this book provides an insight into how construction risks can be effectively controlled whilst works are progressed, to be completed safely, without incident or disruption in operational hospitals.

Today’s businesses are driven by customer ‘pull’ and technological ‘push’. To remain competitive in this dynamic business world, engineering and construction organizations are constantly innovating with new technology tools and techniques to improve process performance in their projects. Their management challenge is to save time, reduce cost and increase quality and operational efficiency. Risk management has recently evolved as an effective method of managing both projects and operations. Risk is inherent in any project, as managers need to plan projects with minimal knowledge and information, but its management helps managers to become proactive rather than reactive. Hence, it not only increases the chance of project achievement, but also helps ensure better performance throughout its operations phase. Various qualitative and quantitative tools are researched extensively by academics and routinely deployed by practitioners for managing risk. These have tremendous potential for wider applications. Yet the current literature on both the theory and practice of risk management is widely scattered. Most of the books emphasize risk management theory but lack practical demonstrations and give little guidance on the application of those theories. This book showcases a number of effective applications of risk management tools and techniques across product and service life in a way useful for practitioners, graduate students and researchers. It also provides an in-depth understanding of the principles of risk management in engineering and construction.

Bilateral and multilateral development agencies use guarantees in order to reduce investors’ exposure to risks and to attract private capital to developing countries. A guarantee is a legally-binding agreement under which the guarantor agrees to pay part or all of the amount due on a loan, or other financial instrument, in the event of non-payment. Across the developing world, there are places where having access to the right guarantee product will enable investments that would otherwise have been blocked—where the returns are there, but the risks involved simply exceed market tolerances, or where regulations limit investors’ ability to bear risk. These opportunities are waiting to be seized by bilateral development agencies and development finance institutions (DFIs), who have the flexibility to innovate. Multilateral development banks (MDBs) are the dominant providers of guarantees in certain market segments, where their ability to influence government behavior and to reduce (rather than merely reallocate) risks on the ground gives them a natural advantage. That said, their accounting practices, treatment by regulators, and business models can also constrain them. In other market segments, specialized guarantee providers or DFIs can create tailored guarantees, pricing them in a way that creates a commercially appealing proposition whilst still earning market rates of return on their capital. This report sets out to present the virtues and shortcomings of scaling the use of guarantees, with a special focus on opportunities for innovation by actors that operate outside the established MDB business model. Since guarantees are not a form of financial flow (unless circumstances require calling the guarantee, with the guarantor assuming the debt of the borrower), they differ from other development finance instruments in terms of structuring, costs, and objectives.