When it comes to contracts administration and management what is meant by claims and risk management?

Basically Claims can divided into two Cost Claims and EOT claims. in FIDIC 1987 Redbook only provision to Main Contractor for claims while 1999 edition have both Employer and the Contractor.

Risk management is the continuing process to identify, analyze, evaluate, and treat loss exposures and monitor risk control and financial resources to mitigate the adverse effects of loss.

Mainly use 3 techniques to control the Risks. They are; Avoidance, Reduction & Transfer

Assuming the reference is to claims from a sub-contractor (variation) and not a warranty claim?

Then claims and risk management could be defined as identifying potential variations that the sub-contractor would be entitled to, and building your defense early with correspondence that would "muddy the waters" for want of a better phrase.  Essentially claims and risk management would be the active mitigation of commercial and schedule impacts to the Project, through early identification of risks.  Then taking action appropriately to help minimise these risks from becoming reality.  It should be noted there is a fine line ethically, between mitigating commercial risk for your company, and simply trying to pass blame and cost impact to your supplier.  This would lead on to another subject, which ties in with this called 'Conflict avoidance'.

Hope this is helpful to you.

Cheers

In every contract, there are certain long term liabilities on the part of supplier/contractor. These liabilities involve risks and associated risks. The management of Claims and Risk means that interests of buyer are looked after well in time and by persons having sharp acumen.