The objective of the Projects (Planning & Analysis) business process is to review the possible projects or project alternatives and to develop an ordered list of recommended projects based on the results of a ranking or an optimization process. The projects are prioritized from a pool of projects based on benefit/cost analysis. However, safety experts can investigate a particular site or location that may or may not be a high crash location. Additionally, this scenario can be extended if several adjacent locations form a cluster of high crash locations. Thus, the safety analyst has the flexibility to select sites from the hotspots identified by the Network Screening or manually based on expert judgment.
For benefit/cost analysis, countermeasures are selected for a specific location. The countermeasures or treatments can be one or many. For locations that have more than one treatment, the combined effects of multiple treatments are considered the best practice. The countermeasures are selected from the catalog of treatments that is maintained by the Safety Analyst or Safety Program manager. Treatments may also be obtained from the supplied link to the CMF Clearing House.
After all treatments are selected for the proposed projects, the benefit/cost analysis can be carried out. The projects that have a benefit/cost ratio greater than one are considered potential projects. From the set of potential projects, the projects with higher benefit/cost ratios and lower costs are given precedence.
After a project is selected and approved, the project status changes from “proposed” to “programmed”.
There are five different types of project statuses defined in Safety Management System namely Proposed, Recommended, Programmed, Discarded and Completed project. The detailed statuses will be discussed in the subsequent sections. Once the project is completed, the actual benefits and costs can be determined from the project tracking or financial system. This will provide the ability to track the difference between estimated benefits and costs versus actual benefits and costs for the completed projects.
