Introduction to Contaminated Site Management - Dealing with Contaminated Sites: From Theory Towards Practical Application - page 79

The quality of a Risk Assessment and the uniformity of the results are of utmost
importance for a justified risk appraisal and a sensible way of spending the available
resources. Clearly, all stakeholders benefit from sound decision-making, based on
systematic and 'smart' Risk Assessment. This 'smart' Risk Assessment requires a
knowledge base and creativity. Creativity is hard to steer, but the knowledge level
of risk assessors could be approved by, for example, auditing systems, courses and
exchange of state-of-the-art Risk Assessment tools. Some countries have auditing
systems and most countries that have a policy on soil quality organise courses on
Risk Assessment.
1.10.5 Project Managers
Project managers are, of course, of crucial importance in any project. The role
of contaminated site project managers, certainly for bigger projects, requires spe-
cial attention. This role is complex, though interesting, for several reasons. First,
a project manager needs to be able to at least have an overview of the scientific
knowledge of Risk Assessment tools. Because of the multi-disciplinary character of
Risk Assessment, this overview often requires the ability to make a broad scientific
interpretation on the part of the project manager. Second, the relationship between
scientists and decision-makers or regulators traverses the whole Risk Assessment
and even more the Risk Management process. Some projects lack efficiency, and
often quality, because of the fact that decision-makers are unable or unwilling to
use the scientific knowledge they need for sound decision-making. Analogously,
scientists often are not capable, nor trained, to include 'soft' decision-making fac-
tors into their investigations, such as decisions on boundary conditions related to the
degree of conservatism or specific political requirements in their Risk Assessments.
It is the role of a project manager to bring together the political starting points
and boundary conditions and the scientific elaboration of Risk Assessment tools,
throughout the whole development of the project. Third, the project manager needs
to have above-average communication abilities in order to be able to deal with the
multi-stakeholder character of contaminated site projects. This has two different
purposes, that is, the project must benefit from the knowledge and interest of all
available stakeholders, and the stakeholders with less knowledge, such as land own-
ers or inhabitants, need to be informed about developments that often affect their
living environment and their well-being. Management involves different roles, both
technical and social, which include aspects of work relationships as well as personal
relationships. This includes safe-guarding (e.g., of the time schedule, the budget),
motivating participants, team building and the optimal distribution of working tasks.
It is often claimed that the creation of a good social atmosphere also stimulates the
more technical performances of a project.
One interesting issue concerns the role of women in Risk Assessment and Risk
Management, and, particularly, in project management. In the 'Rio Declaration
on Environment and Development', the outcome of the 1992 United Nations
Conference on Environment and Development (UNCED) in Rio de Janeiro (United