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April 3-4, 2002
San Antonio, TX
U.S. Department
of Tranportation
Federal Highway
Administration
400 Seventh St., S.W.
Washington, D.C. 20590
On April 3 and 4, 2002, the Federal Highway Administration's Office of Safety hosted a workshop to discuss topics related to workforce development for the highway safety community. The workshop was sponsored in partnership with the Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE), Transportation Research Board (TRB), and the American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHTO). The goal of the workshop was to develop key highway safety workforce strategies and to raise the bar for the transportation profession. Benefiting from the presence of both public and private sector stakeholders' perspectives, the workshop attendees also gave feedback toward the reauthorization of the Transportation Equity Act for the 21st Century (TEA-21).
Representatives from the workshop participated in one of the three breakout sessions, focusing on training and professional development, organizational management perspectives of developing a safety workforce, or the tools and technology required to transfer knowledge and information among professionals. In addition to discussing larger topic areas of workforce development such as human resources and organizational management, the workshop also conveyed the need to continually raise public awareness. This could be done through mechanisms such as educating decision-makers, managers, and political officials on the importance of road safety and highway safety training.
In identifying the needs of the safety professionals, the workshop participants highlighted recommendations that could serve as future goals for advancing the workforce. For example, the participants stated that there was a need for a national transportation clearinghouse that would house all training and professional development information, so people could easily access information about such opportunities from a range of providers. The participants also recommend that the safety community needed quality data to make compelling cases for enhancing highway safety through effective use of human capital.
The speakers discussed an array of topics from the goal of continuously developing comprehensive training courses and matching them with the appropriate highway safety professionals to legislation that would address the development of transportation workforce and safety education. The workshop attendees discussed establishing safety in undergraduate curriculums and initiating pilot projects that would establish highway safety and training in state plans.
Efficient use of human capital can have significant organizational impacts in a performance driven environment. It can also help agencies meet their programmatic safety goals such as reducing injuries and fatalities on our nation's roadways. The workshop attendees developed policy proposals for the next steps that the highway safety community could pursue in an effort to meet the agency's goals. Our future progress toward workforce development includes new training courses that are underway to adequately prepare safety professionals.
The Office of Safety for the Federal Highway Administration will continue to partner with our external collaborators to assess the kinds of resources and safety technologies necessary for the continual training and development of the workforce. We look forward to continuing participation from our safety and transportation community, and encourage everyone to take part in helping enhance safety on our nation's highways.
A. George Ostensen
Associate Administrator for Safety
The Safety Workforce Planning Workshop was held in San Antonio, Texas on April 3–4, 2002. The workshop was co-sponsored by Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), Institute of Transportation Engineers (ITE), American Association of State Highway Officials (AASHTO) and Transportation Research Board (TRB). It was attended by representatives of organizations in the highway safety community who assessed the needs of the safety workforce, and they discussed steps that could be taken to ensure transportation agencies have a capable workforce to meet future needs. The goal of the workshop was to derive policy recommendations that would help enhance highway safety training and workforce development.
Recommendations
Some key topics of the workshop included legislation to improve safety training and education, strategies to provide continuous professional development and an approach to address workforce planning for the U.S. Department of Transportation. The workshop attendees recommended that enforcement, engineering, education and emergency medical services communities be involved in safety education and awareness outreach. It was also recommended that changes made through traditional safety partners be incorporated into the programs of external agencies such as driver's education courses so safety information can be transferred to a larger audience.
Engineering, Education and Enforcement
We need to continuously educate highway professionals and the public about where, why and how fatalities occur on the nation's roadways. A combination of education, enforcement and engineering helps us improve safety by educating the drivers, professionals and enforcement officials. Studies from the insurance industry show that safety is enhanced when there is the perception of apprehension from enforcement coupled with education and public awareness. The first steps toward fatality prevention are awareness through education and commitment to the safety of other drivers on the road.
Due to past fatality rate reductions resulting from improved awareness, training, technology, research and programs, the Federal Highway Administration estimates that 109,000 highway fatalities were prevented in the year 2000. Good training, increased awareness and a quality workforce do make a difference in enhancing safety on our roadways.
Human Capital to Enhance Safety
A safe and secure surface transportation system is vital to reduce highway fatalities, injuries and crashes. While the change in the number of highway fatalities in recent years has been relatively unnoticeable, 41,821 people were killed on our roadways in 2000. Decreasing the number of fatalities will depend on a multifaceted approach to safety changes, which includes affecting driver behavior through education and training, improving roadway infrastructure, changing vehicle design and meeting traffic operations needs. How well our safety workforce is trained and kept up to date with the newest approaches to enhancing safety will be key to decreasing fatality figures.
The attendees drafted policy recommendations that included developing safety training programs and a comprehensive plan to prepare the workforce for their roles and responsibilities, establishing and funding a road safety curriculum and having safety training that is performance driven. The attendees suggested a central source for housing all of the training information. The participants also recommended measuring the success of safety training by having performance evaluations of safety professionals and by measuring reductions in fatalities, injuries and crashes.
The following are a number of policy recommendations developed by the workshop participants:
There is room for improvement, and that is why we need to have continuous education and training on how we can all contribute to this goal. For example, our fatality and injury numbers are on a "plateau." We need to find new opportunities and technologies to restore progress. We need quality, timeliness, and value in developing countermeasures. We need to be aware that the safety needs may vary according to the needs of each locality and by the functional class of roads. There are areas still to be discovered among the safety professionals who have been in the field for a number of years. Training and planning the safety workforce are going to be a process in evolution.
The next steps for institutional consideration and implementation include the following:
FHWA continues to work with organizations such as AASHTO, TRB and ITE to integrate safety with the organizational strategies. In an environment that supports a performance culture, the use of human capital is a vital area that can help government reduce costs and be able to do more with fewer resources. Taking into consideration the future retirements of the federal government workforce, we can learn from the National Science Foundation model that has been able to utilize its workforce and workplace technology in a way that it accomplished twice the workload with half the workforce. Outsourcing and e-government concepts are a couple of initiatives that are being investigated to raise the efficiency and accountability in government.
FHWA desires to have a workforce plan, annual performance reports and strategic program strategies linked together to monitor the agency's progress toward its mission objectives. In addition to supporting the core organizational mission, FHWA supports empowering the workforce to help carry out the agency goals. The agency recognizes that to have effective use of human capital, there must be an effective preparation, planning and funding to provide the mission support.
High performance organizations must have a plan in place to integrate what the employees can contribute to the mission and vital goals for the agency. Human capital must be taken into consideration to measure the return on an agency's investment in its vital focus areas, such as reducing the number of fatalities and injuries on our nation's roadways. FHWA will continue to identify the gaps between the current and future skills and knowledge for the profession. The agency will look toward integrating the human capital perspective in its strategic planning process. We will continue to include training and professional development opportunities to effectively carry out the organizational functions and enhance highway safety. The next part of the Workshop Proceedings shows a summary of issues and recommended policies compiled from the San Antonio Workforce Planning Workshop.
Issues and Recommended Policies
The loss of lives and significant injury due to highway crashes is not real for the decision makers. We need to "outrage" them with the facts.
Highway Safety Workforce Planning Workshop San Antonio, TX, April 3–4, 2002
