Authors: Ali Alshehhi
Abstract: The UAE's ship maintenance industry is essential to support economic growth through uninterrupted logistics. Ship maintenance ensures that the vessels are always in good condition to avoid delays that might arise due to accidents or breakdowns. Despite the significance, the industry faces a challenge due to the risks involved in maintenance projects leading to delays, high costs and reduced vessel life due to poor quality work. Risks in ship maintenance have persisted with growing models and frameworks to support prevention and mitigation. The current ship maintenance frameworks in the UAE are inadequate. There is a lack of knowledge on the nature of risks and their impact on management within the UAE ship maintenance companies. UAE ship maintenance project managers and teams also lack adequate frameworks they can use to design risk management practices. This proposal suggests developing an alternative and robust risk management framework for ship maintenance projects in the UAE. The exploratory study used the Ship Building company team that maintenance ships to explore current strategies and gaps in managing risks by interviewing 20 members. A thematic analysis led to the development of themes leading to a risk management framework. The results of this study identified various types of risks that occur in ship building companies including materials-related, operational, project management, and resource risks. These risks occur due to many reasons, including machinery breakdowns during operations, limited capital, technology issues, strategic management errors, natural disasters, accidents unsafe or negligence by the workforce, improper housekeeping, and lousy planning or execution of plans, among other causes. The study recommends strategies to address the risks based on the engagement of stakeholders and using risk-based approaches. The risk management framework in this study entails identifying, assessing, analyzing, and finding mitigation measures. Results will inform the body of knowledge through a theory, and risks management framework, explaining the relationship between risk causation factors within ship maintenance companies. The findings will also provide ship-building companies with a better framework for risk management leading to educed risks and improved outcomes such as cost and time estimates.
