Managing social risk: Getting a 'license to do business' requires understanding public perception.

摘要

Social risk is becoming as important a factor in project delays as technical risk. Being technical people, we are used to managing technical risk and have the processes and systems in place to do so. However, we have yet to develop effective processes to manage social risk. Historically the industry has largely managed to escape the impact of social risk as our projects have been offshore and out of sight, but it is becoming more evident that our interaction with the local population as well as at government, national, and international levels creates significant risk to the project and to the company.