Volpe Center: Volpe Center Highlights

Information Resources

Volpe Center Highlights - Summer 2005

Focus

Improving Efficiency and Effectiveness through Organizational Development

Public agencies across the nation face similar challenges: reduced resources, heavier workloads, and increased demand for results. To address these problems, managers often have to change the structure of their organizations and business processes. The Volpe Center provides organizational development and change management expertise tailored to the specific needs of government agencies. Volpe experts in behavioral, social, and managerial sciences use an array of tools and methods to help a wide range of public sector organizations target scarce discretionary resources for maximum impact; design effective organizational processes and structures; manage conflict and consensus building; create effective teams; and implement solutions to help organizations increase productivity and effectiveness and manage change.

Organizational Development Overview

Volpe teams implement a range of organizational development activities to help public organizations increase productivity and effectiveness.

Assess organization's condition and recommend policies, programs, and organization or process designs best suited to meeting objectives
Conduct quantitative or qualitative examinations of institutional issues, studies of best practices, development of causal models where organizational factors are thought to be significant
Collect and analyze input from customers and stakeholders
Facilitate multi-agency coordination and cooperation
Develop strategic plans, define goals and objectives, and plan and implement both short-term and long-term actions
Develop performance metrics and accountability systems
Develop outreach, technical assistance, and educational or training programs that promote behaviors that support new organizational or programmatic missions
Evaluate the effectiveness of new programs both during and after their implementation

Clients come to the Volpe Center because of its reputation as an objective partner with valuable government experience. Volpe takes a systemic approach that encompasses the organization, the processes that make it run, and its stakeholders. This approach has been effective in working with teams, administrative units, entire agencies, and multiple internal and external stakeholders.

The following examples illustrate how Volpe has delivered results to its clients.

Helping the Coast Guard Improve Readiness

Shrinking maintenance and operations budgets in the 1990s have led to a distressing degradation in mission readiness for the U.S. Coast Guard's fleet of aging cutters. The Coast Guard Naval Engineering Program asked the Volpe Center for assistance in bringing more attention and resources to the problem of declining cutter readiness. The Volpe team, led by Dr. Rachel Winkeller, Acting Chief of the Planning and Policy Analysis Division, and Mr. Robert Pray of the Technology Applications and Deployment Division, helped the Coast Guard demonstrate a correlation between readiness measures and maintenance budgets. Volpe identified the systems and processes that contributed the most to lowered readiness and worked with Coast Guard senior managers to develop a Business Plan detailing strategies and actions to improve performance. The Volpe Center organized a conference of 150 naval engineers from across the Coast Guard to provide input to the Business Plan. Volpe has also been assisting in the implementation of the plan. With Volpe's support, the Naval Engineering Program has been able to make a successful business case for a substantial increase in funding and to identify priorities for maximizing the allocation of existing funds. The Business Plan has united the Naval Engineering Program around a common set of goals and objectives, and has provided a blueprint for improving cutter readiness.

Streamlining Transportation Services in the District of Columbia

Ownership, commitment, and accountability are key components of the Infrastructure Project Management Team approach that Volpe helped the District of Columbia DOT develop and implement.

The District of Columbia is unique in that it must plan and support transportation functions as both a state and a city. Its transportation system is also vital to the federal government. To improve its delivery of transportation-related services, the District of Columbia decided to separate its transportation functions from the Department of Public Works and create the District Department of Transportation (DDOT). It also adopted a project management team approach to improve the planning, design, and construction of infrastructure projects. DDOT called on the Volpe Center to help plan and facilitate its organizational changes. The Volpe team, led by Dr. Jeffrey Bryan of the Planning and Policy Analysis Division, developed a collaborative redesign process that built consensus among the various functions affected by the change. Volpe supported a DDOT workgroup in developing performance goals for street and bridge construction projects; defining clear roles and responsibilities for all steps in the infrastructure development process, with a focus on including external stakeholders at key decision points; and streamlining work through the redesign of eight core business processes.

Linking Environmental Issues with Infrastructure Planning and Project Delivery

The Federal Highway Administration's Office of Planning, Environment, and Realty asked the Volpe Center to develop case studies of organizational best practices on how states link environmental compliance and permitting with long-term and mid-term infrastructure planning and with the project-delivery process. A Volpe team, led by Dr. Jeffrey Bryan of the Planning and Policy Analysis Division, interviewed staff from six state departments of transportation (Alaska, Delaware, Maine, South Carolina, New Mexico, and Wisconsin) to understand organizational models that lead to exemplary results in linking environmental issues with infrastructure planning and project delivery. The resulting case studies are being used by the Hawaii Department of Transportation to redesign the organizational structure of its environmental and planning functions.

Interagency communication and coordination-early and often-has helped the Virginia DOT, the Virginia State Police, and Fairfax County plan their joint Public Safety and Transportation Operations Center. This unique, proactive process allows more than three years for phased planning.

Integrating Safety and Transportation in Northern Virginia

Northern Virginia's public safety and transportation operations center (PSTOC), slated to open in late 2007, is expected to achieve an exceptional level of interagency operational integration. The PSTOC is jointly conceived and funded by Fairfax County, the Virginia Department of Transportation, and the Virginia State Police. Since spring 2004, Volpe Center staff have been developing a high-level concept of cooperation and an operational transition plan for the PSTOC. Dr. David Damm-Luhr of the Planning and Policy Analysis Division manages the Volpe team. In the first phase of the project, Volpe helped develop the mission, goals, and objectives of the PSTOC, and gathered information on similar initiatives in other parts of the country. Volpe then conducted working sessions with each of the major groups to be located in the PSTOC to document what activities each group performs in carrying out its functions and to identify opportunities for greater cooperation on these activities. In the next phase, Volpe will help user groups define the details of day-to-day operations and center-wide decision making. Volpe regularly facilitates meetings that bring together senior staff from the county and state to discuss issues that cut across five user-level groups: facilities, equipment and systems, dispatching, information sharing, and administration. With Volpe's help, the agencies are working together to leverage assets, eliminate duplication of tasks, and resolve joint issues prior to the PSTOC opening. The process has opened communication channels and contributed to stronger intra-agency and interagency relationships that will serve to facilitate the move into the joint center.

Managing Congestion in Downtown Washington, D.C.

Traffic congestion is a serious problem for downtown Washington, D.C. Mayor Anthony A. Williams convened the Downtown Congestion Management Task Force in May 2004, with the main goal of improving traffic management while sustaining economic development. The Mayor's Task Force comprised 41 civic leaders, senior transportation and planning officials, and federal and District legislators. By creating working groups tasked to analyze different aspects of the congestion management problem and its solutions, the Volpe Center helped this diverse group of stakeholders generate a range of potential actions to better manage traffic in the downtown area. The Task Force settled on a set of actionable recommendations, some of which have already been implemented. Dr. Jeffrey Bryan of the Planning and Policy Analysis Division led this effort.

Enhancing Regional Emergency Preparedness and Security

Coordination among transit and emergency agencies is more important than ever. Volpe facilitates forums that help local agencies form networks and enhance teamwork to improve emergency response.

Well-established relationships among regional agencies can enhance their ability to respond to emergency situations. The Volpe Center designed and conducted a series of forums called "Connecting Communities: Emergency Preparedness and Security" for the Federal Transit Administration. Attendees were exposed to the latest information on safety and disaster preparation, and participated in interactive presentations, breakout discussions, and emergency scenarios. To date, more than 2,000 transit employees and emergency responders have met in 19 forums nationwide. Each forum provided local transit, police, fire, medical response, and emergency management professionals with a common vocabulary as well as meeting places in which to begin working together as teams with a shared purpose. The Connecting Communities forums have helped create local networks that can facilitate regional planning and exercises, and ultimately improve emergency response. Bringing together representatives of different professional communities has also helped establish mutual understanding, trust, and procedures. Mr. Bob Adduci of the Railroad Systems Division leads the Volpe team.

Improving Safety Culture

Volpe's human factors researchers analyze the relationship between human behavior and transportation safety and productivity. Some apply their knowledge of human capabilities and limitations to the design of organizational systems; for example, in the complex environments in which train crews, dispatchers, and maintenance workers perform their jobs. For the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), Volpe is engaged in the implementation of two approaches to gathering and analyzing safety-related data that hold promise for preventing accidents: close-call reporting and behavior-based safety. These approaches include components of organizational development, addressing system change across the railroad industry by building trust and communication within an organization or among diverse groups of industry stakeholders.

"Close calls" can provide warnings about unsafe conditions. Studying close calls can help identify safety hazards and develop corrective actions that can prevent accidents. Gathering the data is challenging, because employees are often unwilling to report a close call if it could result in punishment. Encouraging employees to disclose safety-critical information requires a sense of trust as well as a voluntary and confidential reporting system. Dr. Jordan Multer of the Operator Performance and Safety Analysis Division leads a Volpe team that manages an FRA program to demonstrate the effectiveness of a Confidential Close Call Reporting System for the railroad industry. The Volpe team has successfully brought together representatives of rail industry management, labor, and the FRA, and facilitated mutual understanding of their diverse perspectives. Stakeholders have developed an integrated demonstration program documented in a model Memorandum of Understanding published in April 2005.

Behavior-based safety (BBS) is a proactive process that identifies and observes safety-critical behaviors and provides positive peer-to-peer feedback. It can also be used to identify and mitigate organizational barriers to safe behavior, such as work environment factors, policies, or procedures. Dr. Joyce Ranney of the Operator Performance and Safety Analysis Division leads a Volpe team that supports the FRA in assessing BBS for use in railroading. The goal of this work is twofold: to evaluate individual demonstration projects that apply specific BBS methodologies, and to investigate broader issues, such as implementation, cost, and feasibility, that could influence industry-wide BBS application.

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