Methods, systems, and devices for wireless communication are described. In some wireless systems, a base station may configure a user equipment (UE) for random access (RACH) message transmission in dedicated RACH resources during, for example, a handover process. The contention-free random access (CFRA) resources may allow the UE to transmit RACH messages at a higher transmission power than contention-based random access (CBRA) resources. The base station may indicate, to the UE, RACH transmission parameters for CFRA that are different than parameters for CBRA. These parameters may include configuration information, frequency division multiplexing information, RACH retransmission parameters, target received power, response window length, etc. The UE may use the indicated RACH transmission parameters to transmit a RACH message to the base station. The base station may respond with a RACH response message, and the base station and UE may synchronize upon completion of the RACH procedure.