Chapter 6: How to support students to develop risk assessment and planning skills

Engineering students encounter many team projects during their studies, yet rarely receive practical training on core project skills that they are expected to implement during their projects. This activity provides students with an experiential introduction to core project skills contextualised to demonstrate the both relevance and typical implementation challenges. This activity is an ideal initiation for a new team that will be completing a project together, assisting students to both be more effective in the project and to recognise the opportunity to develop relevant, transferable project skills. This chapter provides the outline of an activity designed to teach the skills listed below, material to assist the facilitator to prepare, and the slides and handouts for teaching the activity.

This 90-minute activity is designed for university-level engineering students. It targets the development of the following skills

1. Risk assessment and planning for projects
2. Collaboration and decision making in teams