Risk Management at State DOTs: Building Momentum and Sustaining the Practice (2025)

Chapter: Summary

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Suggested Citation: "Summary." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2025. Risk Management at State DOTs: Building Momentum and Sustaining the Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/29144.
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SUMMARY

Risk Management at State DOTs: Building Momentum and Sustaining the Practice

NCHRP Project 08-151, “Risk Management at State DOTs: Building Momentum and Sustaining the Practice,” was conducted to develop content for any state department of transportation (DOT), regardless of maturity level, to use and integrate within its agency. The research focused on three levels of risk management: enterprise, program, and project, which all have their challenges and benefits. This guidance identified lessons learned and successful practices from risk management practitioners across the globe and created a website and digital content accessible to all state DOTs and practitioners that contain guidance, examples, and tools to aid in successfully building and sustaining formal risk management within their agencies. As directed in the request for proposals for this project, this report offers guidance to agencies looking to accomplish the following:

  1. Establish and communicate the value of risk management.
  2. Initiate organizational changes at all levels within the agency that enable and strengthen risk management.
  3. Champion risk management within the organization.
  4. Develop and sustain a risk management mindset and agency culture that integrate risk management across programs and into key decision-making processes.

Many transportation agencies have informal or formal risk management policies or processes established that they consider to be effective. These processes often follow a framework with guidance, methodology, policy, and tools to systematically assess risk and adopt strategies and policies to manage it. For some, the lack of clear policy results in inconsistent practices across the agency. The development of guidance and example content produced by this report came from direct engagement with transportation agencies across the country and industry stakeholders with diverse backgrounds and experiences to understand their practices. Practitioners shared their personal experience with integrating risk management within their agencies, and key needs, challenges, and knowledge gaps were identified.

Key Needs

  • Risk management champion and executive leadership support
  • Clear policies that integrate risk management into strategic planning and performance management processes
  • Communication strategy for incorporating risk management within agencies, including basic principles and terminology of risk management
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Suggested Citation: "Summary." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2025. Risk Management at State DOTs: Building Momentum and Sustaining the Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/29144.
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Key Challenges

  • Lack of well-defined roles and responsibilities for leadership and staff to promote integration at all levels of the organization
  • Lack of dedicated staff and adequate staff to build and sustain a risk management program
  • Unclear or siloed business processes that hinder integration of risk management practices across state DOTs

Key Knowledge Gaps

  • Lack of easy-to-implement preexisting standards and policies regarding collecting and using data, tools, and resources; agency structure; personnel; and skills development.
  • Lack of access to educated, well-trained staff to share the principles and application of risk management within a state DOT.
  • Lack of simple online databases, dashboards, and risk procedures for internal agency staff to easily understand how risk is being used at agencies.

Four categories emerged in the development of this research that stand out as the key findings to successfully build and sustain risk management across the levels of the organization (see Figure 1).

The research team gathered resources from state DOTs and other agencies that address these needs, challenges, and knowledge gaps. When the site asks users, “What do you want to do today?”, users can control their experiences and get what they need from the website. To provide further value, the website includes a maturity assessment available to all users to

The illustration consists of four sections with data as follows: Section 1, Culture of risk and organization and resources: Creating a culture of risk within an agency enables and rewards individuals and groups for taking the right risks in an informed manner; Agencies which have found the greatest success in building and sustaining risk management have clear policies pertaining to risk management along with well-defined roles and responsibilities embedded within the organization. Section 2, Process Improvement: To support the operational changes that are necessitated by the integration of management practices, it is often valuable to ensure business processes are reviewed to find ways to make sure the existing processes are inclusive of risk management practices; Process improvement will look different for each agency depending on their unique business structure; however, it will always include the five key elements of process improvement which are define, measure, analyze, improve and control. Section 3, Value proposition and communication and promotion: Buy-in from leadership and at an executive level is essential to building and sustaining risk within an agency; Risk management within an organization adds extreme value to leadership as it enables them to make improved and informed decisions. Section 4, Data and tools and quantification of risk: Providing guidance documents, examples, and tools is important to helping agencies build or sustain risk management; Helping users build risk management, where they will provide recommendations of best practices and resources, and tools for users creating or sustaining risk management, examples, and other resources to continue their practice.
Figure 1. Key findings to successfully build and sustain risk management.
Page 3
Suggested Citation: "Summary." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2025. Risk Management at State DOTs: Building Momentum and Sustaining the Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/29144.
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develop their own feedback on their agency’s risk management practice. There are spreadsheets and data tools, communications tools and diagrams, standard operating procedures and internal guidance, and a concise reference list to relevant research. The website will be housed on the Transportation Management Hub on the AASHTO website. The following graphic shows the content on this website that should assist any agency as it strives to build or sustain risk management within the organization.

The data given in the illustration are as follows: 1, The value of risk management in transportation decision-making and how that value can be communicated. The illustration shows a hand with a dollar coin on it. 2, Relevant concepts of change management. The illustration shows a lightbulb with a gear symbol inside it. 3, Commonly encountered barriers to adopting and sustaining formal risk management and strategies to overcome these barriers. The illustration shows a barricade. 4, Ways to foster an organizational culture that supports the use of formal risk management. The illustration shows a network of people connected. 5, Examples of best practices deployed by state D O Tees in implementing and sustaining successful risk management programs. The illustration shows the gear symbol with a thumbs-up icon at its center. 6, Insights about risk management practices drawn from the public and private sectors. The illustration shows a figurine of a human head with a lightbulb and two textboxes. 7, Communications pieces focused on key topics of risk management, organizational change, and implementation designed for outreach within a state D O T and to external partners. The illustration shows two arrows forming a cyclic process. The gear symbol is placed inside the arrows.
Page 1
Suggested Citation: "Summary." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2025. Risk Management at State DOTs: Building Momentum and Sustaining the Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/29144.
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Suggested Citation: "Summary." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2025. Risk Management at State DOTs: Building Momentum and Sustaining the Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/29144.
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Page 3
Suggested Citation: "Summary." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2025. Risk Management at State DOTs: Building Momentum and Sustaining the Practice. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/29144.
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