**2. Risk management planning**

As any other process in project management, risk management has to be planned in order to forecast the total effort required by the project team for developing the full scope of risk management. The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans), developed a Project Risk Management Handbook which is being used as a reference for planning the steps for applying risk management into specific projects. The purpose of the study, roles and responsibilities, the scope of the Risk Register, risk identification, analysis methods, implementation period, schedule and budget allocation need to be defined with the plan. Special attention should be placed into the human resource (method selection) aspect and in identifying the right phase of the project to initiate with the study. The roles of the Project Manager (PM) and the Risk Manager (RM) are critical for developing a realistic implementation plan (Figure 1). In addition, before starting working wit the RMT, the PM and RM should ensure that important project data is available. For example the project report, cost estimate, project plan, etc.

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team. It covers the basics of risk management applied to transportation projects. Nevertheless, additional knowledge is provided to the team members for assessing properly the risks and opportunities during the qualitative and quantitative analysis. Although there are considerable resources for learning about risk management, Caltrans has adopted this process into its project development process (Figure 2). This approach has assisted for

providing on the job training for the Project Development Team (PDT).

**Figure 2.** Risk management process flow diagram (Caltrans, 2007)

It is important to notice, that the risk assessment is responsibility of the PM and the project team. Nevertheless, it is recommended to use whenever is possible a RM. The RM is a

**Figure 1.** Planning the risk management plan

It is ideal to have the project charter for developing the risk management plan, since in the charter it is possible to identify critical information about the project like scope, conceptual cost estimate, delivery milestones, conceptual risks, stakeholders, etc.
