Find out the top 10 core skills you need to master as a cost and risk analysis manager and what hard skills you need to know to succeed in this job.

A Cost and Risk Analysis Manager has the primary role of preparing estimates to be used for organizing, planning, and scheduling work. He/she estimates the cost of products or services and assess whether projects, products, or services are cost effective.

Other associated duties include monitoring financial indicators, setting up cost monitoring and reporting procedures, review production requirements to determine if it is cost-effective to produce or pay for components, developing business information systems, analyzing the financial data, liaising with other employees on financial matters and to coordinate business operations, analyze documentation to prepare estimates on labor, time and materials as well as carry out studies to establish standard hours.

Core Skills Required to be a Cost and Risk Analysis Manager

Core skills describe a set of non-technical abilities, knowledge, and understanding that form the basis for successful participation in the workplace. Core skills enable employees to efficiently and professionally navigate the world of work and interact with others, as well as adapt and think critically to solve problems.

Core skills are often tagged onto job descriptions to find or attract employees with specific essential core values that enable the company to remain competitive, build relationships, and improve productivity.

A cost and risk analysis manager should master the following 10 core skills to fulfill her job properly.

Writing Skills:

Written Communication involves the interaction that makes use of the written word with precision and logic making it the very common form of business communication.

A Cost and Risk Analysis Manager must necessarily learn and stay updated on effective written communication skills that involve the construction of a logical argument, note taking, editing and summarizing as well as incorporating new ways of writing presentations.

Listening Skills:

Listening Skills are a practical ability to accurately receive and interpret messages you receive during the communication process to ensure flow and accuracy are maintained.

A Cost and Risk Analysis Manager ought to have outstanding listening skills that lead to a better understanding at the workplace between the management and the staff, customer satisfaction in return yielding greater productivity with fewer mistakes and increased sharing of information in a more creative and innovative way.

Office Politics:

Office Politics is a tool that assesses the operational capacity to balance diverse views of the interested parties of the human interactions that involve power and authority.

A Cost and Risk Analysis Manager is meant to pay attention to the organizational politics while creating the right political landscape that lubricates the organization's internal gears without focusing on personal gain rather focusing on the corporate profit that will benefit everyone.

Crisis Management:

Crisis Management is the application of strategies that are designed to help an organization deal with a sudden and significant negative event.

A Cost and Risk Analysis Manager must be able to tell the early signs of crisis, warn the employees against the aftermaths on the future course of action and move on to discipline anyone who does not adhere to the warning given and moves on to cause the crisis.

Management Skills:

Management Skills are also known as leadership skills and involve planning, decision making, delegation, time management and time management to ensure optimum organization in focus and the technical of how and why of accomplishing tasks.

A Cost and Risk Analysis Manager must understand the business organization, finance, and communication as well as the market and the relevant technologies used to help manage everyone as they work together in a group.

Empathy:

Empathy is the understanding of another person's condition from their perspective by placing yourself in their shoes and feeling what they are feeling.

A Cost and Risk Analysis Manager ought to practice empathy with his staff by learning to be a good listener and understanding what his employees are going through and choosing to feel it with them through the use of imagination and accommodate them.

Self Awareness:

Self Awareness is the ability to have a sound understanding of who you are as a person and how to relate to the world in which you live by understanding your strengths and weaknesses and how to manage them in the workplace.

A Cost and Risk Analysis Manager must creatively know how to administer the workforce diversity by understanding the culture identity, biases, and stereotypes and become more aware on how he reflects his thoughts, feelings, and behavior towards the staff.

Seeing Potential Problems:

Seeing Potential Problems is the ability to structure the current situations and identify developments that could cause problems in the future.

A Cost and Risk Analysis Manager needs to see potential problems before they occur and work to stop them early enough, he also has to stay ahead of the flow not to be caught you by upcoming issues that could be easily prevented if they were noted soon enough.

Long Range Planning:

Long Range Planning is setting long-term goals and objectives for your business or project to ensure its growth and sustainability is reached by all the employees.

A Cost and Risk Analysis Manager needs creativity in defining long-term goals that ought to be proactive, putting together a full employee focused management strategy that analyzes the major initiatives and translates them into functional goals that employees handle.

Diversity Awareness:

Diversity Awareness is the understanding that people are different and unique in their particular way and respecting their uniqueness.

A Cost and Risk Analysis Manager ought to successfully identify the various types of diversity presented in his company to be able to benefit from these individual differences in the hope of improving the success of his team and encourage the team members to become aware of these qualities and use them appropriately.

Hard Skills Required to be a Cost and Risk Analysis Manager

Hard skills are job-specific skill sets, or expertise, that are teachable and whose presence can be tested through exams. While core skills are more difficult to quantify and less tangible, hard skills are quantifiable and more defined.

Hard skills are usually listed on an applicant's resume to help recruiters know the applicant's qualifications for the applied position. A recruiter, therefore, needs to review the applicant's resume and education to find out if he/she has the knowledge necessary to get the job done.

A cost and risk analysis manager should have a good command of the following hard skills to succeed in her job.

Cost and Risk Analysis Manager: Hard skills list

Accounting
Administration and Management
Algebra
Analyze and Interpret Data and Budgets
Apply statistical process control (spc)
Apply understanding of manufacturing concepts to cost estimation
Bid engineering, construction or extraction projects
Billing Statements (Prepare billing statements)
Blueprints and Technical Drawings
Bookkeeping
Budgeting
Building and Construction
Computers and Electronics (use computers to enter, access and retrieve data)
Customer Service
Cost Analysis Theory (Apply Cost Analysis Theory)
Cost control, Budgets and Forecasts
Cost Estimation Software
Data Analysis & Benchmarking
Defining of scope
Design
Determine production factors
Develop and maintain cost estimation data bases
Economics
Engineering
Equipment factored and capacity factored estimating
Estimating
Estimate cost, time, and materials needed for repairs
Estimate damage
Estimate time needed for project
General Factors and Ratios
Instructing
Labor Productivity Analysis
Normalization (inflation, metallurgy, location, etc.)
Mathematics Principles
Management of Financial Resources
Management of Material Resources
Obtain information from clients, customers, patients or others
Operations Analysis
Order parts
Planning / scheduling
Prepare cost estimates for construction related projects
Prepare cost estimates for management information
Process records and maintain forms and files
Reading of and quantification from engineering document
Reporting (Prepare reports in timely manner)
Schematics and Specifications
Statistical Data (Analyze statistical data)
Statistical cost estimation methods
Systems Analysis
Technical
Technology
Translate design specifications to cost estimates
Usage of breakdown structures
Writing
Write project or bid proposals
Write vehicle damage repair estimates

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