As the complexity and uncertainty of international construction projects increase, the importance of risk management capabilities in the construction industry has become more pronounced. Accordingly, Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) has become a widely adopted approach among organizations as a new way for more effective risk management. Despite its growing application, research related to ERM is still in its infancy, and most of the existing studies have been limited to financial industries. Therefore, this study aims to empirically examine the influence of ERM’s core elements on project risk management (PRM) and project performance within construction firms. Our findings indicate that the key ERM components—organization, policy, and culture—significantly enhance PRM processes, underscoring their critical role and importance. Additionally, effective PRM positively affects project outcomes, highlighting its significance for construction companies engaged in international projects. While ERM does not directly impact project performance, it indirectly improves outcomes through enhanced PRM capabilities. It suggests that ERM will contribute to the firm’s performance by improving the firm’s PRM capability through policies and a risk-focused culture corresponding to the adopted ERM organization and system..

Under increased complexity and uncertainty of overseas construction projects, it is important for construction companies to improve their own project risk management capabilities instead of risk-taking strategies to secure competitiveness in the overseas construction market. Although most of the risks occur in project execution stage, many previous studies focused on planning stage including risk identification and analysis among PRM process. Therefore, this study aims to verify the effectiveness of whole PRM process during project execution stage through empirical study on participants of overseas construction projects. As the result it was found that first, the factor directly affects the project success is the execution process of PRM. It implies that appropriate actions such as appointing charged manager for risks, timely implementation of responding plan, continuous risk monitoring and updating established plan are the key for contribution to the project success. Second, the importance of communication in PRM is also found, which is not conducted at a specific but throughout the entire PRM process and need to be managed as essential factor for successful PRM..