Identifying key risks in infrastructure projects – Case study of Cairo Festival City project in Egypt

Abstract Infrastructure is an asset class vulnerable to high political, regulatory and execution risk. The successful delivery of infrastructure projects (IP) is challenging due to uncertain events which might appear, and which generate threats towards project activities. This paper is concerned with identifying key threats arising from the internal and external environment of stakeholder’s organization during construction of IP. The methodology of the paper includes a literature review of infrastructure challenges, followed by identification and classification of risk factors using risk breakdown structure. Furthermore, a check list analysis of key risks was performed. The ‘Cairo Festival City” project was analysed as a case study of infrastructure project. Purposive sampling was used in order to target 70 specific experts related to infrastructure projects. Finally, the paper generated a full risk register that presents identified challenges gathered from the literature as well as agreed risks which resulted from the Egyptian case study.