Business Process Modeling for the Virginia Department of Transportation

Business Process Modeling for the Virginia Department of Transportation
Author: James Hamilton Lambert
Publisher:
Total Pages: 106
Release: 2005
Genre: Resource allocation
ISBN:

This effort demonstrates business process modeling to describe the integration of particular planning and programming activities of a state highway agency. The motivations to document planning and programming activities are that: (i) resources for construction projects are used effectively; (ii) employees know where projects are in their construction life cycles and how projects may have been changed; (iii) the time of agency employees is used effectively; and (iv) the employees are working together to complete transportation projects in a reasonable time. The effort adopts the IDEF modeling capability of the BPWin software (also known as the AllFusion Process Modeler). IDEF modeling encourages consistent documentation of who generates what information, products, services; for whom; how; and for what reasons. Across the agency, the modeling is useful in prioritizing processes for change and maintenance. The modeling empowers employees at all levels, makes institutional knowledge relevant and accessible, and removes bottlenecks. It also encourages the development of integrated systems along functional lines, including administration, engineering, and operations, and focuses agency personnel on the good rather than the perfect system. Highway agencies have multiple business processes that can benefit from an integrated description of business and technology in process models. For example, the information technology division of a large highway agency maintains and develops around sixty software applications at any one time. Business process modeling helps the division improve their allocation of resources and priorities to these applications. This document provides the purpose and scope of the effort, the method behind IDEF modeling and the AllFusion software, the results and discussion of the effort, the deliverables, and the recommendations for future work. Twelve appendices provide the technical results. The authors identify some significant benefits that can be realized by an implementing agency in exchange for modest costs.

A Tool to Aid the Comparison of Improvement Projects for the Virginia Department of Transportation

A Tool to Aid the Comparison of Improvement Projects for the Virginia Department of Transportation
Author: Yacov Y. Haimes
Publisher:
Total Pages: 78
Release: 1998
Genre: Highway engineering
ISBN:

The goal of this effort is to assist the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) in improving the comparison in planning of potential primary and secondary roadway improvement projects. Historical projects that have been implemented or considered for implementation have been used as a case study data set. Methods are proposed for estimating cost, performance gain and crash risk reduction of future roadway projects, with the main focus being the presentation of trade offs among these criteria. If, in a particular case, more accurate and/or appropriate data is available for one or more of these criteria (e.g. from a simulation study that has been performed), then this information can easily be used to supplement or replace the estimations proposed here. The project comparison instrument combines three major decision making attributes in project selection: crash risk, performance, and project cost. By quantifying these attributes across a number of proposed highway improvement projects, projects can more readily be compared to one another, and a more holistic view of potential projects is achieved. This is an important step when choosing a portfolio of projects each year. In order to compare projects, attributes are quantified in the following manner for planning level decisions. Crash risk reduction is calculated as the number of crashes avoided per year at the project site. Particular roadway improvements are typically assumed to decrease the expected number of crashes by a statistically determined and pretabulated percentage. Performance gain is quantified by the vehicle minutes of travel time avoided in the peak hour. Finally, cost is modeled as the sum of preliminary engineering, right of way and construction costs. Once the objectives are quantified, they can be graphically displayed in a Project Comparison Chart. Examples for applying this approach are given in the text and in the accompanying workbook.

Extended Comparison Tool for Major Highway Projects

Extended Comparison Tool for Major Highway Projects
Author: James H. Lambert
Publisher:
Total Pages: 58
Release: 2003
Genre: Highway engineering
ISBN:

Under the Virginia Transportation Act signed into law in April 2000, more than $10 billion would have been invested in highway construction, public transportation, airports, and ports during the following 6 years. However, recent budgetary constraints will result in a delay in investing more than $2 billion in road projects for more than a decade. In the current study, a previously developed comparison tool was extended to bring quantitative evidence of safety and categorical evidence of broad motivations to planners, engineers, and the public in comparing the benefits of proposed transportation projects. The extended tool developed in the current study provides visual devices for presenting multifaceted information about project attributes. Policymakers and planners may find the presentation useful in assessing what types of projects are being undertaken and what projects to prefer to others. The extended tool represents project information including cost, average daily traffic, and crash rates for comparison and prioritization of the 1,500 candidate projects that constitute the development plan of Virginia highways. The extended tool is flexible to accommodate applications such as project selection (planning) and programming. Several sources of information include the crash databases of the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) and project plans for districts and localities. The extended tool enables planners to identify principal motivations for various projects based on categories defined by the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century. The tool introduces summary reports of criteria including project aggregate costs and counts of projects with particular motivations, facilitating system-level analyses and project ranking. The summary reports can be useful to interpret outcomes of human deliberation or multicriteria rating and ranking processes, some of which are demonstrated in this study in the body of the report and in a substantial appendix. The major innovation of the extended comparison tool is its ability to synthesize the relevant quantitative and categorical information on a large and diverse portfolio of highway investments, bringing more evidence to the table earlier in the planning process. Three case studies demonstrate the application of the extended comparison tool in short-, medium-, and long-term transportation plans. These case studies are the VDOT-Culpeper District Transportation Development Plan (a 6-year plan), long-range financially constrained plans of selected small Virginia localities, and the long-range plan of the Thomas Jefferson Planning District Commission. The incremental data to assess over 100 projects in a VDOT District Six-Year Plan were collected in 90 minutes, providing an advantage over typical methods that can require several hours or more per project. Recommendations are given for implementation of the extended comparison tool and further development of the software prototype.