Red Flag Item Lists

A red flag item list is created at the earliest stages of project development and maintained as a checklist during project development. It is perhaps the simplest form of risk identification and risk management. Not all projects will require a comprehensive and quantitative risk management process. A red flag item list can be used in a streamlined qualitative risk management process.

A red flag item list is a technique to identify risks and focus attention on critical items that can impact the project's cost and schedule. Issues and items that can potentially impact project cost or schedule in a significant way are identified in a list, or red flagged, and the list is kept current as the project progresses through development and construction management. By listing items that can potentially impact a project's cost or schedule and by keeping the list current, the project team has a better perspective for setting proper contingencies and controlling risk. Occasionally, items considered risky are mentioned in planning but soon forgotten. The red flag item list facilitates communication among planners, engineers, and construction managers about these items. By maintaining a running list, these items will not disappear from consideration and then later cause problems.

Caltrans has developed a sample list of risks in its Project Risk Management Handbook.While this sample list can be used to create a list of red flag items for a project, it is quite comprehensive and any single project's list of red flag items should not include all of these elements. The next section discusses risk charters, which is a more formalized and typically more quantitative extension of a red flag list.