265 15 th International Research/Expert Conference ”Trends in the Development of Machinery and Associated Technology” TMT 2011, Prague, Czech Republic, 12-18 September 2011 PROJECT RISK MANAGEMENT IN LARGE OIL COMPANY Snezana Kirin NIS a.d. Narodnog fronta 12, Novi Sad Serbia Aleksandar Sedmak Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, University of Belgrade Kraljice Marije 16, Belgrade Serbia ABSTRACT Risk is incorporated in all human activities since it is a consequence of man’s inability to „see“ the future. This is even more pronouced with fast technology development which one can witness in recent years. Also one can notice significant influence of globalisation leading to risk globalisation and wide spread of risk through all processes and projects, especially under conditions of world wide economic crises. Finally, enormous amount of information which should be handled in nowdays processes further increases risk in all our activities. Therefore, risk management is becoming more and more important and risk even becomes the most important criterion for decision making in complex processes. One example is large and complex oil company in a transition country, which is the focus of this paper. Namely, in this paper an investigation of all relevant factors influencing project risk management has been performed and results analysed by advanced statistical methods and presented through discussion and conclusions. It has been shown that successfull risk in a large and complex oil industry requires modern advanced methods, as used in this paper. Keywords: Project risk management, Large oil company, Decision making process 1. INTRODUCTION Risk management is getting increasing attention, since experience gathered in last few decades enables its adequate and comprehensive understanding and evaluation. In large companies risk management is complex process requiring quantitative and qualitative methods, [1,2], in order to increase profitability and open new business possibilities. In this process special attention should be paid to the fact that decision made in the initial phase of a high-risk project are lacking precise information about costs and time scale. Therefore, the risk analysis is needed as the frame or plan for successful risk management which would cover both the decision making and decision implementation phases. The aim of this investigation was to evaluate basic factors influencing decision making and implementation process in large oil company, as well as factors preventing scuh a process, in order to minimize or eliminate them. Toward this aim following general (GH) and individual hypotheses (IH) have been adopted: GH1: Decision making process is based on an analysis of all risks GH2: It is possible to identify risk faktors both in decision making and decision implementation phases. IH1: Project features affect risk faktors both in decision making and decision implementation phases. IH2: Company organization affects risk factors both in decision making and decision implementation phases. IH3: Employees permanent education reduces risk both in the decision making and decision implementation phases. IH4: Available methods and techniques of decision making process can not eliminate risk of failure in achieving goals defined by decision making process. 2. INVESTIGATION Investigation has been performed in a large oil company, operating under high risk conditions, including unstable transitional period in the region, privatization and restructuring. The sample