Stephen Grey

Risk runs through the fabric of any project. It is so intimately bound up in forecasting and decision making that it cannot be isolated or handled separately from other project management activities. Success can only be achieved if risk management is integrated closely with project management. Over the past decade, developments in risk management methods and standards have addressed the need to manage risk in a project in an integrated manner. This is a more natural way of working than past practices have been. It has beneficial effects on the practice of risk management and the way it is implemented in projects. This new edition of Project Risk Management Guidelines has been fully updated to include the new international standards that embody this principle, ISO 31000 Risk management and IEC 62198 Managing risk in projects. The book explains the standards and how they can be applied. It provides a clear introduction to basic project risk management, introduces the reader to specialized areas of projects and procurement, and shows how quantitative risk analysis methods can be used in large projects. Chapter by chapter, the authors present simple, practical steps and illustrate them with examples drawn from their extensive experience from around the world, in many different industry sectors and cultures and at all stages of projects from conception through development and into execution. Qualitative and quantitative approaches are covered. Traditional structures and processes are discussed as well as developments in the way projects are conducted, such as outsourcing arrangements and risk-sharing structures like public–private partnerships. Improved outcomes can be achieved when sound risk management is used to capture opportunities and reduce threats. Its unique focus and wealth of checklists, tables and other resources make this book an essential and enduring tool for anyone involved with project work.

NUMBER ONE EVENING STANDARD BESTSELLERBOOK OF THE YEAR - DAILY TELEGRAPH'Exceptional. A blueprint for productive, sophisticated espionage in the age of Islamist terror' Daily TelegraphSpying has changed. In this era of email intercepts and drone strikes, spooks are expected to uncover plots buried in mountains of data. Yet this makes the need for trained field operatives who can verify facts and uncover secrets more acute than ever. The human factor endures.In The New Spymasters, the first real account of how modern espionage works, we follow riveting stories of dramatic missions and the larger-than-life characters who undertook them. These were moments when success - and ultimately life or death - depended on whether the right person was in the right place... at exactly the right time.

Coming up to Christmas, and reporter Stephen Grey is embedded with B Company, 2 Yorks, in southern Afghanistan during Operation Snakebite. Their mission: to take the Taliban stronghold of Musa Qala. For some this battle will be their last.In the thick of the fighting, Grey provides a breathtaking boots-and-bullets glimpse of combat chaos as British, American and Afghan forces struggle to secure a dusty little desert town known to be crucial to the drug trade. Operation Snakebite reveals everything you need to know about the brutal conflict in Afghanistan: from the political infighting and bureaucratic interference to the frontline troops soldiering on with unsuitable gear and poor intelligence.

On June 10th, 2002, Attorney General John Ashcroft announced that the US had captured a known terrorist who was exploring a plan to explode a "dirty bomb" on American soil. That alleged terrorist was Jos Padilla who was finally charged in 2005 with conspiracy to murder. What Ashcroft didn't talk about was how information against him was obtained - by the relentless torture of one man-- Binyam Mohamed, in the name of the United States. Arrested at Karachi Airport before Padilla's arrest on April 10, 2002, Mohamed was put on a luxury executive jet and flown to an interrogation center in Morocco. For over 18 months, he was subjected to one torture after another: Beating followed beating and, then, his guards produced razor blades and began to split the skin all over his body, including on his genitals. Since 1997, hundreds of people, many of whom have no ties to terrorist organizations, have been abducted from foreign airports or street corners on suspicions based at times on the flimsiest of evidence courtesy of the United States Central Intelligence Agency. In Ghost Plane, Stephen Grey tells the true story of the CIA's torture program known by the euphemism "extraordinary rendition" and the airplanes that make the program run. Begun during the Clinton administration, but taking a decidedly more voracious turn after 9/11, the rendition system has seen the transfer of more than 1000 prisoners into jails stretching from Guantanamo to Syria, from Kabul to Bangkok and beyond. Grey had access to the thousands of CIA flight records and has interviewed dozens of sources from the most senior levels of the National Security Council to the CIA. In Ghost Plane, he paints a disturbing picture of the War on Terror that reaches to the highest levels of power in Washington, D.C. and exposes the extreme ethical corruption at the heart of this US government program, a program finally acknowledged by President George Bush in September 2006, undertaken in the name of the citizens of the United States..

In December 2005, Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, assured the world that the flights of CIA private jets that have criss-crossed Europe since 9/11 had no role in the sending of prisoners to be tortured. 'The United States has not transported anyone, and will not transport anyone, to a country when we believe he will be tortured,' she said. Tony Blair assured Parliament: 'I have absolutely no evidence to suggest that anything illegal has been happening here at all.' But as Stephen Grey reveals in "Ghost Plane", Rice's claims were a falsehood - and Britain's government has also turned a blind eye to a CIA operation that systematically out-sourced the harsh interrogation of its captives. Interviewing sources from the most senior levels of the current and former US administration, from the CIA's department of operations, Grey reveals how the agency's program, known by the euphemism 'extraordinary rendition', has transported hundreds of prisoners to foreign jails and its own secret facilities in the full knowledge they will face harsh torture. 'Of course we do torture', one former senior CIA operative told Grey. 'Imagine putting President Bush's head under water and telling him to raise his hand when he thinks he's being tortured. Give him the water-board treatment, and he'd be raising his hand straightaway.' From the dark cells of Syria's 'Palestine Branch' interrogation center - where inmates are detained for months on end in cells the size of coffins - to secret CIA jails in Afghanistan that bombard prisoners with 24-hour rock music, Grey uses the prisoners' accounts and thousands of CIA jet flight logs to weave a vivid tale of life inside this hidden 'extra-legal' netherworld that is America's international prison network. Including interviews with pilots that flew the CIA's jets and packed with exclusive revelations, "Ghost Plane" reveals the extraordinary detective work that tracked down the Agency's covert aviation network. Grey shows how it emerged from the former Air America that flew in Vietnam and Laos. Tracing the history of rendition back to the mid-1990s, he then shows how after 9/11 rendition expanded beyond recognition into what amounted to a systematic torture program - a terrifying world of endless interrogations, frequent transfers round the world, and detention without charge And all was authorised by the White House.

In the estimating, planning and management of any project, large or small, an understanding of the impact of risk is critical. This book explains how the growing number of people choosing to or forced to organise their work as projects can make realistic assessments of the uncertainty affecting costs, timescale and revenue, before commitments are made. A clear analysis of the role of uncertainty is combined in this concise and practical handbook with simple, cost-effective techniques for measuring and modelling the overall risk to a project’s budget and schedule. There is advice and help here for the whole project team, including project managers; bid managers; project sales professionals; planners; estimators; managers running a project-based business; and consultants and auditors advising a projects business. Drawn from the author’s extensive experience on projects ranging in scale from a few man-months to hundreds of man-years, the book will beelevant to anyone involved in a project-based business. Examples are presented as simple models, built in spreadsheets using the @Risk software package. No more than basic knowledge of Lotus 1-2-3® or Excel® will be required by the reader.