AASHTO Journal, 11 October 2013
Washington State Department of Transportation this week released an independent review that assesses the department’s major projects and makes recommendations on how to make it stronger through better stewardship of tax dollars and a better delivery record.
“WSDOT is charged with building and maintaining a safe, reliable, and efficient transportation system for our state,” said WSDOT Secretary Lynn Peterson in a statement. “When I joined the agency, I requested a review of how WSDOT conducts business to ensure we are delivering all of our projects on time and on budget. I wanted to know, ‘What lessons can we learn from recent mistakes to ensure that similar situations don’t happen again?'”
The review found that WSDOT had procedures and systems in place to manage its large “mega” projects, but that sometimes they were not used as they should be, that risk management decisions were not completely evaluated, and that resources were often limited for the department, meaning oversight was not always as strong as it could have been.
In response to those findings, the review then made several recommendations, mainly that WSDOT should consider the general contractor/construction management delivery approach to encourage innovation, accelerate delivery, lower traffic impacts, and create a fair price for taxpayers and the contractor. Another major recommendation made through the review was to establish a pilot program for a certain number of public private partnerships to better evaluate the effectiveness of that delivery approach.
Several recommendations were made that WSDOT was already in the midst of implementing, including: appointing a chief engineer with mega project experience; bringing someone on board in a new deputy chief engineer position to ensure oversight of those mega projects; creating a stronger analysis of how WSDOT contracts work and how risk is shared with contractors; creating a new quality assurance manager position to ensure protocols are followed agency-wide; and creating opportunities for WSDOT staff to get mega project experience in order to have more individuals included and weighing in on future programs.
WSDOT commissioned the report in March 2013. The review was conducted by CH2M Hill’s Ron Paananen and Tom Warne & Associates’ John Njord, former director of the Utah Department of Transportation.
The full 17-page review is available here.