The whole process is based on the so-called risk perception, since there can not be prevention without perception. Unfortunately, the limits of human nature in this regard are well known. Although variable from person to person, it is well known that the perception of the risk of the individual is high only in cases where it has already personally experienced the emergence of the consequences of a risk.

As strange as it may seem, the common attitude is to underestimate the possibility that something that has already gone wrong in the past may have happened to us too. This is well demonstrated by statistical studies that show how the most common and ruinous causes of design disasters are always the same, to demonstrate how project managers and designers tend not to learn from mistakes made by others in the past even in projects very similar to their own.

In general, numerous researches show that the tendency is not to think adequately about possible problems and to protect themselves accordingly, unless they are evidence that is really difficult to ignore.

Given the correspondence between uncertainty and risk, the project manager will simply have to assume that his project will run into risks.

Presented by Romano Pisciotti