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Federal Highway Administration Research and Technology: Coordinating, Developing, and Delivering Highway Transportation Innovations

 

Research, Technology, and Education (RT&E) Program Management

 

 

The Federal Highway Administration’s (FHWA’s) RT&E program strives to generate new solutions, build more effective partnerships, and provide better information and tools for decisionmaking, which will enable the Nation to make the best investments in and enhance the U.S. transportation system. The FHWA’s role in the RT&E program is to provide leadership to address current and emerging needs facing the Nation’s transportation system. FHWA’s leadership role signifies a commitment to working collaboratively with its partners in defining the direction of and developing the roadmaps needed to achieve results, especially since these partners may at times be the ones implementing the technologies and innovations developed.

 

The responsibility of the RT&E program is to proactively and effectively develop and deliver the solutions that meet current challenges and future needs. The RT&E program is committed to providing superior training and education to transportation professionals. The entire innovation life cycle is covered under the RT&E program umbrella—including agenda setting to research and development, to technology testing and evaluation, to the deployment and impact evaluation of market-ready technologies and innovations.

 

In 2003, FHWA leadership accepted the challenge to "raise the bar" on R&T and adopted the Corporate Master Plan (CMP) for Research and Deployment of Technology & Innovation (FHWA-RD-03-077), a strategic management framework to ensure an effective and efficient FHWA R&T program. The CMP was developed with input from stakeholders and consists of 7 guiding principles and 26 Agency commitments. The commitments include involving stakeholders throughout the process, employing merit reviews, and evaluating research and deployment on an ongoing basis.

The FHWA Research and Technology Leadership Team is accountable for implementing the Agency’s RT&E program. FHWA leadership strives continually to improve the RT&E program to ensure the appropriate Federal role and strategies for investing in and conducting research and development on behalf of and in support of our partners and stakeholders in both exploratory advanced research (focused specifically on longer term and higher risk breakthrough research with the potential for transformational improvements) and applied research (focused on developing products that can be delivered to practitioners within 1 or 2 years).