Construction projects are characterized as very complex projects. This is because of their uniqueness, dynamic political and economic circumstances, weather, long life of projects, fluctuations in resources prices, and changes of engineering require
ment, etc. Therefore, construction projects are subject to a wide range of various risks, which in case these risks occur will have considerable impacts on projects objectives in terms of time, cost and quality. Therefore, there is a need to investigate these risks and their impacts on project objectives and parties.
The Client is one of the most important party in any project, and it usually lacks to have a clear strategy and policy to deal and manage risks that affect its objectives. This study aims to produce a strategy to deal and manage risks during construction stage from the client's point of view. The construction stage is selected because it takes a long time of the project life and consumes the largest amount of project budget, and it highly affects the project success or failure.
Data were collected, by utilizing both questionnaire and interview survey, from more than one hundred participants from construction companies, clients and other construction professionals. An SPSS17 and EXCEL software were used to treat the data to find correlation between different variables, means and standard deviations. Risks were ranked based on risk importance indicator. The results showed that the most important risk is 'delay of payment to contractors as agreed in the contract' and the lowest risk is 'changes of design during construction'.
The study concluded that the client should be concerned to formulate a specialized team in risk management in order to assist him in decision making process and developing practical solutions for dealing with risks in the construction sector.
Keywords: risk , risk management , Client , Construction projects .
