“Human beings have invented the concept of risk in order to understand and cope with the dangers and uncertainties of life”, this is a phrase attributed to Daniel Kahneman, an Israeli-American psychologist who in 2002 was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for his research work regarding human judgment and decision making under uncertainty.
We all have a stage in our lives in which we enjoy a certain stability, and everything seems to be in a delicate balance. However, all the pieces that make up our existence are connected by fine links and the future is fraught with uncertainty. There are certain risks that we know well, that are foreseeable and we can control, but there are also others that arise unexpectedly and confront us, so that, inevitably, everything could fall apart.
If that were to happen, it is important to collect all the pieces, to rebuild the pillars and the support scaffolding, which allows the lost stability to be achieved again as soon as possible. This happens both in private life and in business
The Allianz Risk Barometer 2022, an annual publication with the highest global reputation in the world of risk analysis, is based on a survey that collects the opinions of 2,650 risk experts from 22 industrial sectors, from small, medium-sized companies and large, from 89 countries around the world, who were asked to list the three most important risks in each sector.
This report lists some of the biggest risks in the engineering, construction and real estate sector, with business interruption for any reason ranking highest, including supply chain disruption which is something we are already seeing. In second place, with a difference of just one percentage point, are natural disasters, such as floods, forest fires and meteorological phenomena that are becoming more intense and frequent every day due to climate change. A risk that is ranked among the five most important for the first time is the shortage of qualified and expert human capital.
The construction industry is one that, at least in Mexico, is classified as high risk by credit and financial institutions. But, from the very roots of risk, the tree of opportunities grows and flourishes, and since the construction of infrastructure is the main trigger for economic recovery and the natural antidote to overcome any difficulty, the correct response of the builders of our country has to be to face this moment of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity that we are living through with optimism.
Lee Iacoca said that all too often great opportunities pass before us disguised as insoluble problems. The construction industry needs to incorporate resilience into its processes and projects, adapt to the adverse conditions imposed by climate change and professionalize human capital, to turn the most feared threats into brilliant opportunities.
Raul Asis Monforte Gonzalez
E-mail: raul@mienergiamx.com
Facebook: Raul Asis Monforte Gonzalez
Twitter: @raulmonforteg
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The best opportunities are rooted in risk