Calculator
Project management risk calculator — Malaysia
List your risks with a probability and an impact. You get expected monetary value for each, a score to rank them by, and a total you can defend as a contingency figure.
| Risk | Type | Probability | Impact (RM) | Score | EMV (RM) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| % | 6 | -48,000 | |||
| % | 6 | -27,000 | |||
| % | 10 | -60,000 | |||
| % | 6 | 30,000 |
Threats
RM-135,000
Opportunities
RM30,000
Net expected value
RM-105,000
Score is a 1–25 ordering aid: probability band times impact band, with impact banded relative to the largest risk in your own list. It ranks the register — it is not a currency.
Expected monetary value, and the trap in it
EMV is probability times impact. A 40% chance of a RM120,000 overrun carries an expected cost of RM48,000, and summing that across the register gives a number you can take to a budget conversation instead of a colour.
Threats are negative and opportunities positive, which is why the tool asks. Registers that only record threats systematically overstate the contingency needed, because the upside cases are real and are simply never written down.
⚠️ The trap: EMV is an AVERAGE across many hypothetical runs of the project, and you are running it once. A 10% chance of RM500,000 has an EMV of RM50,000 — and RM50,000 is the one outcome that cannot actually occur. You will either lose nothing or lose half a million.
So EMV is the right basis for sizing a contingency pot across a portfolio of many small risks, and the wrong basis for deciding whether a single catastrophic risk is survivable. For that one, ignore the average and ask what happens if it lands.
Making the register useful rather than ceremonial
Write the risk as a cause and an effect, not as a topic. "Weather" is not a risk; "monsoon delays the external works, pushing handover past the contractual date" is one, and only the second can be assigned an impact.
Give every risk an owner who can actually act. A register owned by the project manager is a list; a register where each line has someone who can spend money or change a plan is a control.
Review probabilities as evidence arrives rather than at fixed intervals. Most registers are scored once at initiation and never touched, at which point they measure the mood of the kickoff meeting.
And keep the closed ones visible. A risk that did not happen because someone acted is the best evidence you have that the process is worth its overhead.
Questions
›What is expected monetary value?
Probability multiplied by impact. It converts a risk into a single figure you can add up, compare and budget against.
It is an expected value in the statistical sense — the average across many hypothetical outcomes — not a prediction of what will happen on your project.
›How should I set the probability?
From evidence where you have it: how often this went wrong on comparable past work. From a considered team judgement where you do not.
Precision beyond bands of ten is usually false. The value is in the ordering and the conversation, not in the second decimal place.
›What does the 1–25 score mean?
It is a probability band times an impact band, each on a one-to-five scale, giving the familiar heat-map ordering. Impact is banded relative to the largest risk in your own list.
Use it to rank and triage. It is not a currency, and it should never be added up.
›Should contingency just equal total EMV?
It is a defensible starting point for a register of many small-to-medium risks, and far better than a flat percentage picked because it is round.
Adjust for the shape of the register. One enormous low-probability risk distorts the total, and that risk usually needs a plan rather than a provision.
Get a scoped quote
Tell us your team size, timeframe and whether you pay the HRD Corp levy. Within one working day you get a day rate, a suggested course shape and how to claim it through HRD Corp.