FHWA/AASHTO

The Program Delivery Assessment Tool

What got us here

In the public sector, we face ever-increasing expectations to do more with less while maintaining high integrity and showing continuous improvement for our processes and products. The FHWA Leadership Team suggested that a tool be developed where our local Division practitioners could work with their local State partners to assess their mutual strengths and weaknesses in the ability to deliver, operate and maintain projects and programs, to help us focus efforts to improve our performance. Hence, the concept of a Program Delivery Assessment Tool (PDAT) was conceived.

How the Tool will be Used

The first and most important use of the tool will be by local practitioners at the State and Division level. Program area leaders from the Division and State will jointly assess the team’s capabilities for their program area. The tool will show basic, advanced, state-of-the-practice and innovative elements in each program area. The local participants will determine which elements are present and working locally, and which are not. This should generate discussions about what basic and advanced practices the local group wants to improve or add during the upcoming year.

Collateral Benefits – Identification of Best Practices

The FHWA, working with AASHTO can identify the state-of-the-practice or “best practices” from across a broad spectrum of experiences. If the local pair chooses to move toward state-of-the-practice, a national inventory would be created on where best practice exists, and the ability to generate peer to peer site visits, teleconferences, or multi-state workshops to facilitate transfer of best practice from those who have to those who want. In this way, the PDAT will achieve its biggest promise to help continually advance the capabilities of our partnership to achieve broad national goals such as saving lives and streamlining project delivery. The beauty of the concept is that the tool can be continually updated and refreshed to add today’s innovations as tomorrow’s best practice, thus improving our efficiency and effectiveness.

Likewise, FHWA and AASHTO can use the PDAT information to identify national or regional capability gaps that will help our Associate Administrators and AASHTO staff to design improvement strategies, such as adjusted guidelines, training courses, workshops, domestic scans, peer-to-peer visits or other capacity building techniques. But in no way, will the collected information be used to rank order or otherwise compare States with one another.

Next Steps

In order to synchronize our activities, the timeframe to conduct the pilot has been postponed to late fall to ensure full participation from the States. To meet its full potential, the PDAT will need the review and consideration of the key highway community partners including FHWA and the state DOTs through AASHTO. Three to five State leaders have been added to each of the ten program area groups developing the draft tool. The combined FHWA and State teams are just beginning to meet, and each team will start by reviewing the initial draft tool for the program area. The proposed format for the PDAT is for each Program Area to be organized into Core Categories and Core Elements established within each Core Category. The tool will include some method define the relative “health” of program delivery through a scoring or description on some scale from “meets minimum” to “best practice”. A “consistency team” will address important issues as format, scoring, data security, information management, long-term ownership, and the like.

PDAT Schedule

Activity

/

Date

Presentation at AASHTO Subcommittees Meetings / June, July, August
Final Draft Assessment Tool Complete / September 2005
Rollout to FHWA/AASHTO / AASHTO Annual Mtg
Conduct PDAT Pilot in Selected States / October 1-31, 2005
PDAT Implementation / February 1, 2006

PDAT SUBGROUP TEAM MEMBERS

Safety:
Ernie Blais, FHWA CT - Team Leader
Beth Alicandri – FHWA HQ
Peter Rusch – FHWA NRC
Mark Bartlett – FHWA GA
Mary Stringfellow – FHWA LA
Joe Glinski – FHWA OH
Dennis Merida – FHWA NJ
Karen Yunk – FHWA NJ
Tom Welsh - IO
Bruce Ibarguen - ME
Ed Rice - FL
Troy Costales - OR
AASHTO Contact: Keith Sinclair / Design/Construction:
Patrick Bauer, FHWA OH – Team Leader Don Davis - FHWA FL
Mark Stinson - FHWA LA
Vince Mammano - FHWA VA
Gene Hoelker - FHWA NRC
Dan Sanayi - FHWA HQ
Brian Hare - PA
Kevin Dayton - WA
Daniel D'Angelo - NY
Kirk McClelland - MD
James Tynan - NY
Roger Driskell - IL
Byron Coburn Jr. - VA
Diane Heckemeyer - MO
Scott Christie - PA
AASHTO Contact: Jim McDonnell
Environment:

Pete Hartman, FHWA NE – Team Leader

Pam Stephenson, - FHWA HQ
David Walterscheid – FHWA HQ
Jon-Paul Kohler – FHWA IL
Ted Burch – FHWA MT
Gerry Kennedy – FHWA IA
Sharon Love – FHWA WA
Mary Ivey - NY
John Mettille - KY
Kathy Ames - IL
Jay Norvell - CA
AASHTO Contact: Shannon Eggleston - Environment / Planning:
Vern Mickelsen, FHWA WY – Team Leader
Ralph Rizzo – FHWA RI
Don Cameron – FHWA MI
Karen Schmidt – FHWA AK
Sabrina David – FHWA FL
Bernadette Dupont – FHWA KY
Larry Cullari – FHWA NJ
Lorrie Lau – FHWA HQ
John Hummeston – FHWA HQ
Larry Anderson – FHWA HQ
Susan Mortel - MI
Calvin Leggett - NC
Mike Bruff - NC
Randy Halvorson - MN
Charlie Rountree - ID
Dennis Keck - NJ
AASHTO Contact: David Clawson
Operations:

Kate Quinn, FHWA IN – Team Leader

Greg Jones – FHWA NRC
Patrick Kennedy – FHWA DE
Pam Kordenbrock – FHWA NM
Jim McCarthy – FHWA MN
Wendell Myer – FHWA KS
Mike Brower – FHWA WA
Steve Clinger – FHWA HQ
Martin Knopp – FHWA NRC
Rick Nelson - NV
John Friend - MI
AASHTO Contact: Valerie Kalhammer / System Preservation:
Kate Quinn, FHWA IN – Team Leader Ken Jacoby – FHWA HQ
Peter Klescovic – FHWA ME
Robert Davies – FHWA NY
Chris Newman – FHWA HQ
Peter Weykamp NY
Huley Shumpert SC
AASHTO Contact:Bob Bryant
Civil Rights:
David Nelson, FHWA AZ – Team Leader
Teresa Banks, FHWA HQ
Jodi Petersen, FHWA WA
Pam Foster, FHWA SC
Willie Harris, FHWA NRC
Garland SweeneyNY
Jon Dunham AK
Celina Benavidez, Colorado
AASHTO Contact: Hannah Whitney / Finance:

Derrell Turner, FHWA AR – Team Leader

Dale Gray – FHWA HQ
John Jeffers – FHWA NRC
Kim Walraven – FHWA TX
Louis Varnado – FHWA DC
Don Bullock - FHWA MI
Ken Myers – FHWA VA
Nancy Slagle - AK
Mike Patterson - OK
Lowell Clary - FL
Marsha Johnson - FL
Rick Whitney – IN
AASHTO Contact: Janet Kavinoky
Right of Way:

Pete Hartman, FHWA NE – Team Leader

David Walterscheid – FHWA HQ
Jon-Paul Kohler – FHWA IL
Gerry Kennedy – FHWA IA
Chris Larson - MD
Ken Towcimak - FL
Jim Viau - OH
Jerry Gallinger - WA
AASHTO Contact: David Clawson - ROW

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