Water industry clients in the United Kingdom (UK) require assistance from consulting and contracting partners in delivering large programmes of work. Many of the projects involved in these programmes require deep excavations and major structures which impose load on the ground in some way. The ground engineering elements of these projects is an area where the risks are high and where projects characteristically have unknown elements. This paper will explain how ground risk management is used on large programmes to identify high risk projects. Once identified, systems are put in place to effectively protect schedules and reduce risk through optimising design solutions. This is done by incorporating risk reviews from technical specialists at the appropriate level.