Decision and Risk Management Professional (DRMP-AACE) Course

Decision and risk management professional course teaches the skills required for a key component of an Engineer’s job – creating value by making decisions that yield optimal returns on the allocation of human and financial resources. The many uncertainties inherent to big business (estimating current ‘states-of-the world/nature’ and predicting future events) create considerable uncertainty in the value that can be realised from resource-allocation decisions. Consequently, there will be a strong emphasis on evaluating the impacts of uncertainty, managing its resultant risks and planning to exploit its up-side potential.

Topics to be addressed are the decision-making process, multi-objective decision making, decision-tree analysis, decision criteria, Monte Carlo Simulation and Value of Information and Flexibility. In addition, Utility Theory will be introduced as a means of rationally accounting for risk attitudes. Some of the psychological and judgemental aspects of how people respond to uncertainty will be discussed. The techniques learned in this course will also be useful in making personal decisions.

Decision and Risk Management Professional Learning Objectives

The overall learning objectives of this study guide are:

• Understand Decision and Risk Management (DRM) within the Total Cost Management Framework;
• Understand the evolution of Decision and Risk Management (DRM);
• Describe what is essential to planning and implementing a Decision and Risk Management (DRM) process, and apply its practices within a capital management or project organization in various enterprise settings;
• Understand the essentials of Decision and Risk Management (DRM) as they apply to many Total Cost Management (TCM) processes
• Learn specific tools and processes for analysing and making decisions – useful both professionally and personally
• Practice using these tools and processes in Excel
• Learn to evaluate and interpret the output of DandRA tools and processes – to make the best decision
• Develop a critical-thinking, problem-solving, value-creating approach to decision-making
• Demonstrate DandRA software commonly used by industry
• As part of a team, perform and present a critical review of a paper/topic related to the course material