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Purpose -The purpose of this paper is to examine the sensemaking processes leading to project managers' responses to an unexpected event in an international project setting. High uncertainty and unexpected events are prevalent in international projects conducted in challenging and complex environments. The paper analyzes how an unexpected event and the ways to cope with it were made sense of by a Finnish and a Chinese project manager in a system supplier's delivery project in China. Design/methodology/approach -This paper builds on a qualitative case study of the two project managers' sensemaking processes in the face of a single unexpected event. Narrative interviews were used as the method for data collection. The actantial framework by Greimas was used in analyzing the interview narratives. Findings -The paper shows how the project managers' sensemaking processes, even within the same project management team, are highly subjective, leading to the coexistence of multiple, and highly divergent responses to the unexpected event. The paper also highlights how these sensemaking processes create the coexistence of multiple, divergent systems of project structures and boundaries for coping with the unexpected event.Originality/value -While the existing project management literature has distinguished various tactics used by project managers for responding to unexpected events, of lesser attention have been the actual sensemaking processes underlying and producing these responses. The paper especially stresses how the sensemaking processes between project managers coming from culturally different backgrounds can yield highly contrasting interpretations and responses to the same event.

Urban infrastructures are essential to the health, safety, security and economic well-being of citizens and organisations. Therefore, the managers of critical infrastructures (CI) and infrastructure systems in urban areas need to be constantly aware of and prepared for to any man-made and natural disasters. In this paper, we propose a structured approach to assess extreme weather impacts on CI and discuss how resilience and risk tolerance of critical infrastructure can be enhanced. The approach is aimed at supporting CI owners' and managers' decision-making on a strategic level. It follows a process flow from hazard and CI identification, vulnerability analysis, potential damage estimation, loss assessment to identification and assessment of measures. The approach incorporates many elements, phases and methods from hazard assessment, vulnerability assessment, risk assessment and cost-benefit analysis (CBA), and combines and incorporates them into one aggregated structure, thus providing a holistic view to risk management and CI protection. The proposed approach is flexible in the sense that it encompasses not only a rigorous quantitative assessment, but also allows for a semi-quantitative or qualitative assessment. In addition, the approach enhances transparency of decision making and contributes to more comprehensive use of available information. The paper is based on research carried out in the INTACT and HARMONISE projects, which are co-funded by the European Union under the 7th Framework Programme.

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