**4. Risk manager role**

The relevance that a risk manager plays during the implementation phase is crucial for the success of the study. The RM as a risk expert should be able to lead, coordinate, educate, explain, convince, propose, monitor and evaluate the entire process; plus he or she needs to be able to have experience in leading teams from different backgrounds and coming from different functional units and agencies. Vose (2008) enounces the following as the characteristics of the risk analysts: creative thinkers, confident, modest, thick-skinned, communicators, pragmatic, able to conceptualize, curious, good at mathematics, a feel for numbers, finishers, cynical, pedantic, careful, social and neutral. The reality is that we not always can find individuals that have all the virtues mentioned before, therefore; we need to select the most critical characteristics that a risk manager should have. Definitely a risk manager should be a good communicator, must have an analytical mind and needs to be able to think outside the box. The skills of a risk manager are somehow related to the project manager's, in the sense of managing and controlling. However, the risk manager needs to deal with risk assessment that in the quantitative arena requires analytical modelling skills that the project manager is usually not trained for.

It is a demanding list and indicates; that risk analysis should be performed by people who have a proven track record of doing risk management for several projects ideally. It is also rather unlikely to find these skills in one person: the best risk analyst units with which we work are composed of a number of individuals with complementary skills and strengths Vose (2008).

The Washington State Department of Transportation ([WSDOT], 2010) in their Guidelines for CRA-CEVP Workshops, enlisted some of the risk manager responsibility: risk elicitation, risk modelling, cost validation/review, lead meetings, and provides reports and Develops or implements workshops on topics such as project definition, and risk identification and management. The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans, 2007) describes the risk manager (Risk Officer) responsibilities as risk management planning, identification, qualitative and quantitative analysis, risk response and risk monitoring and control. See Figure 3.

It is very important to take into consideration that the person selected or named to become the risk manager, should be someone that in addition of having the minimum capabilities, should be a neutral team element that can guide the risk team towards a non biased risk assessment of the project.

Although the position of RM in public agencies and private companies is rather new; currently the importance of having such an expert formally within the organization structure has become more formal and demanded. It has been realized that the benefits of having such an expert are much higher than the losses caused by not properly assessing and managing risks.


**Figure 3.** Risk management key responsibilities (Caltrans, 2007)
