2012 MATC Fall Lecture Series: Randy Peters
Larissa Sazama
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11/09/2017
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2012 MATC Fall Lecture Series
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- [00:00:00.512]Your vision, your mission,
- [00:00:03.523]and your strategic goals.
- [00:00:06.077]What I'm gonna share with you is the PowerPoint I used
- [00:00:09.135]in August with my senior leadership to kind of
- [00:00:13.398]frame up the strategic course that we're going to be
- [00:00:19.085]embarked upon in the coming years.
- [00:00:22.105]I'll go through that exactly as I presented it
- [00:00:25.535]to my senior staff, and then since it gets into
- [00:00:29.496]strategic goal setting, and some of the strategic goals
- [00:00:33.953]I'll also share with you some of our data driven
- [00:00:38.862]corporate performance measures.
- [00:00:40.765]Because a broad goal could mean a hundred different things
- [00:00:45.396]to a hundred different people.
- [00:00:48.541]It's metrics and performance data.
- [00:00:52.131]I assure you, when you follow your career
- [00:00:55.855]to levels like this, you're gonna wanna need feedback.
- [00:01:00.034]You'll have a welter of opinion no matter where you turn.
- [00:01:04.248]People always look to the people with the best data.
- [00:01:09.615]Usually the answer people.
- [00:01:13.247]And engineers, and any kind of executive branch division,
- [00:01:17.288]or decision, the engineers comport themselves very well
- [00:01:21.336]because we are numbers based, analytical,
- [00:01:25.671]and we have skillsets that we've learned
- [00:01:28.651]through analysis, and it really has served me well.
- [00:01:33.272]So with that, I'm going to-
- [00:01:39.190]One of the privileges of being a director is
- [00:01:41.724]you no longer make your own PowerPoints, right?
- [00:01:45.932]This is one of my slides, and I think it is a reference
- [00:01:50.103]to a Mayan prediction or something.
- [00:01:55.552]I don't expect the world to end on December 21st,
- [00:01:58.368]but I do know that the Nebraska-
- [00:02:05.664]The symbols that you see here represent four different
- [00:02:10.317]documents that we've published recently.
- [00:02:14.660]Some recently, some as long as 13 years ago
- [00:02:17.848]at the department of Roads but if you're one of my employees
- [00:02:21.605]you wonder, do we have a strategic plan?
- [00:02:25.157]Is it coherent?
- [00:02:26.055]Are these documents in conflict with each other
- [00:02:28.597]because the vision 2032 just recently completed
- [00:02:36.171]is a long ranged planning document looking at that
- [00:02:39.116]10,000 mile network of highways.
- [00:02:43.172]And envisioning what needs to be done to keep it
- [00:02:46.843]in a state of good repair, and to keep it
- [00:02:49.910]operating at a good level of service,
- [00:02:54.324]and to keep it integrated with the other modes
- [00:02:57.636]of transportation; aeronautics, rail,
- [00:03:02.255]various actually some water navigation along the
- [00:03:06.391]Missouri river in this state, and of course
- [00:03:09.126]pedestrian and bicycle modes, and transit.
- [00:03:13.433]So it's a coordinated plan looks out 20 years
- [00:03:18.951]and itself has some strategic goals, but that's
- [00:03:23.613]the macro world, that's not-
- [00:03:25.936]If you're running an organization you have to have
- [00:03:27.694]strategic goals about your asset base.
- [00:03:30.515]You also have to have strategic goals about your
- [00:03:33.451]work force and your internal control system.
- [00:03:37.507]So that's what some of these other documents were about.
- [00:03:41.603]The strategic plan as published in 1999,
- [00:03:46.466]was the one I inherit.
- [00:03:52.981]As to being regarded as the premier transportation agency
- [00:03:56.881]in the nation, so it's lofty, it's high level stuff.
- [00:04:03.306]Really in a vision statement, you really want something
- [00:04:06.450]that people can visualize, hence a vision statement.
- [00:04:11.275]So what I've been telling my people was
- [00:04:13.734]I don't want our citizens and our stake holders
- [00:04:18.365]to think of us as the butt of the old joke,
- [00:04:21.397]what's yellow and sleeps four?
- [00:04:24.878]A department of roads truck.
- [00:04:27.216]I want them to think of us as competent people,
- [00:04:31.835]well trained people who are service oriented
- [00:04:35.648]and are there as good stewards of the highway.
- [00:04:39.369]It's the message I try to convey.
- [00:04:41.824]That's my vision for the department.
- [00:04:45.546]Our mission statement is in there and it was developed
- [00:04:49.845]by consensus by committee and you can tell.
- [00:04:54.007]In my opinion, it's an awful mission statement,
- [00:04:56.994]and I will recite if for you, but I think I'm the only one
- [00:05:00.189]at the department who can recite it.
- [00:05:02.690]It says, "Our mission is to provide and maintain
- [00:05:06.494]in cooperation with public and private organizations
- [00:05:10.097]a safe, reliable, affordable, environmentally compatible
- [00:05:16.516]state wide transportation system
- [00:05:19.376]for the movement of people and goods".
- [00:05:22.764]So if you ask the guy behind the snow plow,
- [00:05:25.623]and say what's your mission?
- [00:05:26.887]That's just too much of a mouthful.
- [00:05:33.060]I'm proposing that our new one be,
- [00:05:36.249]"We provide the best possible
- [00:05:37.720]state wide transportation system" period.
- [00:05:42.138]Beyond that, what it means and how we do it
- [00:05:44.920]and what the quality control parameters are,
- [00:05:48.597]we will express through a series
- [00:05:51.990]of our overriding strategic goals.
- [00:05:55.745]So that's what our point gets to.
- [00:06:00.982]The other two documents in here is performance measures,
- [00:06:06.179]our corporate performance measures
- [00:06:09.324]and it's a set of the data that really matters for us.
- [00:06:12.509]And it's organized under that of the old regime.
- [00:06:16.934]It needs to be told a little bit for my strategic goals,
- [00:06:20.667]but it's very important and we're gonna give it
- [00:06:23.002]a lot of prominence as we go forward.
- [00:06:26.922]And finally this asset management team report
- [00:06:30.559]included our external assets and also
- [00:06:35.146]probably what you would consider the internal assets
- [00:06:38.259]that traveling public is less concerned about.
- [00:06:42.517]Like our snow plow fleet, our equipment fleet,
- [00:06:47.628]our building campus infrastructure,
- [00:06:50.661]and kind of our internal human resources.
- [00:06:54.258]Computers, internal office assets are contained
- [00:06:59.710]in the asset management team final report.
- [00:07:05.850]So we said we need a strategic plan.
- [00:07:08.423]We need all of these competing plans and documents
- [00:07:11.695]to be coherent and harmonized so they need to be
- [00:07:15.292]in one place, and it's a way for us to report our progress
- [00:07:20.122]to our stake holders, which we are an
- [00:07:24.091]executive branch agency.
- [00:07:27.243]I report directly to the governor.
- [00:07:29.813]We are responsible to the tax payers, who pay our bills.
- [00:07:34.367]Our revenue is raised through gas tax.
- [00:07:37.593]Tax on the gasoline you buy and a tax
- [00:07:40.910]on the motor vehicles you register
- [00:07:43.731]comes to the department of Roads,
- [00:07:45.948]gets in a trust fund and is our responsibility
- [00:07:48.935]to use that money for it's intended purpose
- [00:07:52.713]and be good stewards of that 10,000 mile highway.
- [00:08:00.155]So when I assumed leadership, we had just published
- [00:08:04.208]Vision 2032 and we're proud of it.
- [00:08:08.870]And it has four overarching goals in it.
- [00:08:13.119]We realize that we needed to harmonize the goals in this
- [00:08:18.094]with the goals in the other areas so that our
- [00:08:21.404]leadership team had a clear picture
- [00:08:24.391]of where we wanted to take our agents.
- [00:08:29.263]The group that actually took a year in the development
- [00:08:33.678]of this agency, Vision 2032, included many external partners
- [00:08:40.630]including Aemal Khattak, here at the university,
- [00:08:44.067]sat on our development team as well as representatives
- [00:08:48.735]from Nebraska's league of municipalities,
- [00:08:51.593]county officials, federal highway, division,
- [00:08:57.526]many internal staff, and it invoked much public outreach.
- [00:09:02.243]Going out to public meetings, getting citizen input,
- [00:09:05.709]getting input through our web, trying to take pulse
- [00:09:09.685]of the people who use our transportation system
- [00:09:12.671]about what it needs to provide for the next 20 years.
- [00:09:18.034]We also had an executive level steering committee.
- [00:09:24.636]So it's intent was to be a vision
- [00:09:27.163]for all of Nebraska's citizens.
- [00:09:30.882]Stakeholder driven, getting toward a desired future.
- [00:09:39.428]System oriented in the sense that even though
- [00:09:42.822]our name is the Department of Roads,
- [00:09:45.210]we do have a goal of integrating transit with
- [00:09:52.120]passenger cars transportation system, rail,
- [00:10:01.603]the airports, the strategic air cargo; freight and passenger
- [00:10:07.435]network in Nebraska, and the bicycle passengers
- [00:10:11.482]in an increasingly important mode of transportation.
- [00:10:15.402]We're responsible for the integration of the whole system.
- [00:10:20.826]We'd like to be focused on results
- [00:10:22.673]so that we have major scores.
- [00:10:24.759]How good is the highway in that mark,
- [00:10:26.435]how good is the pavement, we can measure it,
- [00:10:29.094]what's our goal, are we standing still,
- [00:10:32.853]going forward, sliding back.
- [00:10:38.780]See, because of our revenues
- [00:10:41.977]are derived from federal and state taxes.
- [00:10:47.208]The last one I've breezed over is we are unique to Nebraska.
- [00:10:50.232]We couldn't pick Missouri's plan off the shelf.
- [00:10:53.625]It wouldn't be customized for Nebraska.
- [00:10:56.657]We have to develop this for our unique geographic situation.
- [00:11:04.539]So as I had mentioned, we had
- [00:11:05.912]an extensive outreach to stakeholders.
- [00:11:08.696]We did a survey using modern scientific methods
- [00:11:12.385]to develop opinion surveys.
- [00:11:14.721]We held summits where people could come in
- [00:11:16.728]and interact face to face.
- [00:11:19.836]We had two rounds of presentations to
- [00:11:21.961]the League of Municipalities.
- [00:11:25.758]District highway commission meetings, and the
- [00:11:30.207]association of county officials,
- [00:11:33.513]and Nebraska has three metropolitan planning organizations.
- [00:11:39.065]The Omaha area metro, the Lincoln are metro,
- [00:11:43.324]and then up in the northeast part of the state
- [00:11:45.084]South Sioux City is part of Iowa's Sioux City metro region.
- [00:11:52.729]And then we translated the vision into an action
- [00:11:56.001]by a set of a-
- [00:11:58.297]As I said there was a vision for the interoperability
- [00:12:02.921]of a system, a set of goals.
- [00:12:06.922]And I'll go through some of those goals.
- [00:12:08.925]And then within goals, objectives are broken down
- [00:12:11.537]into a little bit more finite time bound results
- [00:12:18.338]in a way that a goal is.
- [00:12:20.207]Strategies are a means to get there,
- [00:12:23.308]and actions are tactics to carry out the strategies.
- [00:12:28.412]The key to this is you start with broad goals
- [00:12:31.610]that you have a consensus about.
- [00:12:34.721]You're driven by your performance measures, though.
- [00:12:37.457]Your goal is really defined by what it is
- [00:12:39.990]you're gonna measure, and what it is
- [00:12:42.323]that matters for your performance.
- [00:12:49.194]Together with that Vision 2032,
- [00:12:51.571]as I said we had other documents that had developed
- [00:12:54.399]during other eras of the Department Roads.
- [00:12:56.967]We want to make sure that they're in harmony,
- [00:12:58.531]they don't conflict with each other,
- [00:12:59.917]that the goals are consistent from among us.
- [00:13:03.800]So there was the previous director did a similar exercise
- [00:13:08.789]three years ago, and it got
- [00:13:11.363]the executive leadership arraignment.
- [00:13:13.529]That lead to five what we called emphasis areas at the time.
- [00:13:18.411]They have to be harmonized with our strategic goals,
- [00:13:22.253]as well as our asset management team report
- [00:13:25.163]that I spoke about, and then we have published a
- [00:13:28.353]strategic highway safety plan to try and drive the numbers
- [00:13:32.526]of fatalities and injuries down.
- [00:13:34.448]Those goals needed to be harmonized
- [00:13:36.538]into the strategic plan as well.
- [00:13:41.318]So this is an action photo.
- [00:13:45.868](laughs) I'm sorry, executives!
- [00:13:48.770]We're not exactly action superheroes, but you know
- [00:13:52.052]you get these things together.
- [00:13:53.970]You get your executive team around you
- [00:13:55.810]and you think these things through.
- [00:13:58.543]How are we going to steer this big agency
- [00:14:01.606]and how are we going to communicate these goals
- [00:14:05.035]from the guys who drive the snow plows
- [00:14:07.078]or the guys who are managing the construction projects
- [00:14:11.330]to ensure the quality and the materials and the-
- [00:14:20.948]So we took the various goals from the various documents
- [00:14:28.059]and distilled them into a set
- [00:14:32.676]of eight overarching strategic goals.
- [00:14:37.911]Four from the Vision 2032 plus these five
- [00:14:43.306]external partnerships, asset management project delivery
- [00:14:49.683]and work force development.
- [00:14:51.973]And those have become the eight strategic goals
- [00:14:55.036]that we're gonna-
- [00:15:02.886]So, here they are.
- [00:15:05.544]This is really what our performance is about.
- [00:15:08.489]It needs to be framed in one of these eight goals.
- [00:15:11.756]Safety, clearly is one of the keys and when I say safety,
- [00:15:16.909]there's two broad elements to safety.
- [00:15:19.238]One is the number of fatalities
- [00:15:21.648]that occur due to highway crashes.
- [00:15:24.918]We want to reduce that.
- [00:15:26.718]We want to reduce it dramatically, and we have performance
- [00:15:29.501]measures that I'll share with you on that.
- [00:15:32.034]The other is the safety of the employees.
- [00:15:36.075]They're exposed to traffic, they're exposed to
- [00:15:38.785]occupational hazards doing the work you need to do
- [00:15:41.437]to keep this asset base up.
- [00:15:43.271]Very important to us that we have good conformists
- [00:15:46.050]with employee safety.
- [00:15:48.428]Mobility is the word we use for level of service.
- [00:15:53.243]If you're in a traffic engineering class
- [00:15:54.928]this is about keeping the level of service at B or higher.
- [00:15:59.065]Removing about-
- [00:16:05.326]Mobility is one of our eight strategic goals.
- [00:16:09.934]Environmental Stewardship is about the impact our
- [00:16:12.770]transportation system has
- [00:16:14.377]on the natural and human environment.
- [00:16:17.414]It's very essential to our stewardship of our
- [00:16:22.993]drainage systems have to be compatible with the
- [00:16:25.289]natural environment.
- [00:16:28.322]Containing our run off from our construction practices
- [00:16:32.707]when we've opened up the vegetation and we're grading.
- [00:16:37.177]The Earth is very vulnerable to erosion
- [00:16:39.752]and contamination or other sorts.
- [00:16:41.882]We take great pride in what we do there.
- [00:16:45.125]A lot of our project planning, project development,
- [00:16:48.976]involves decision making that's framed by the
- [00:16:52.091]National Environmental Policy App, or NPA,
- [00:16:55.573]and it's very critical to our performance when we're
- [00:16:59.797]doing what we call project delivery.
- [00:17:03.698]Coordination and cooperation is how we interact
- [00:17:06.933]with the other people around us.
- [00:17:08.938]I've gotta be responsible to my boss, the governor.
- [00:17:12.100]We have to be responsible to the Nebraska legislature,
- [00:17:15.631]who annually does our appropriations.
- [00:17:19.194]Cities, counties, metropolitan planning organizations,
- [00:17:25.824]federal highway, university, citizens.
- [00:17:30.790]The coordination and cooperation aspect
- [00:17:33.374]of our business is very challenging.
- [00:17:36.045]It's also very vital.
- [00:17:37.196]If you don't do that right,
- [00:17:38.550]you're not gonna get the other pieces right.
- [00:17:42.532]Workforce development.
- [00:17:44.005]That's more in terms of continuous train-
- [00:17:47.854]Professional development for the technical people.
- [00:17:49.818]Engineers, naturally, have a requirement to maintain their
- [00:17:54.206]license to have an ongoing curriculum
- [00:17:57.252]of professional development.
- [00:17:58.890]But all our accountants need that as well.
- [00:18:01.108]Our write-away professionals, our attorneys.
- [00:18:04.098]We need to continue to develop our workforce because
- [00:18:07.920]you need to be continuously learning.
- [00:18:11.411]In the world that we live in these days.
- [00:18:15.143]Plus, you have to develop successors.
- [00:18:20.149]Demographics tell us that the baby boomers are retiring
- [00:18:24.420]at a pretty brisk pace and we need to bring the
- [00:18:28.776]new generation on board and give them the opportunity
- [00:18:33.522]to learn the business and succeed us.
- [00:18:37.409]So we're gonna have a strategic plan to do that.
- [00:18:42.210]Project delivery is what we call the creation of the plans.
- [00:18:47.458]This is the concept part that the engineers do
- [00:18:50.985]before it actually gets built by contractors.
- [00:18:54.848]So that involves-
- [00:19:04.640]Engineers designing road ways.
- [00:19:07.021]All of that has to be done to meet a fiscal restraint.
- [00:19:11.866]If you have a $200 million construction budget,
- [00:19:14.268]you need to develop $200 million worth of projects.
- [00:19:17.332]They have to be developed on time to be started
- [00:19:20.588]in construction in the right window, because
- [00:19:23.890]you can't build all your highways in Nebraska
- [00:19:26.736]in December and January and February.
- [00:19:30.831]So you have to have them ready to go, starting construction
- [00:19:34.092]in the fall or the spring, and they have to be completed
- [00:19:38.555]on time, and it's a huge discipline in order to do that.
- [00:19:43.932]We employ about 150 engineers that help us deliver the-
- [00:19:53.598]to carry out the project delivery
- [00:19:55.541]part of our responsibility.
- [00:19:59.521]Asset management strategic goal.
- [00:20:02.086]That's about taking care of the 10,000 mile network.
- [00:20:06.490]Keeping the pavement in a state of good repair,
- [00:20:08.847]keeping the bridges in a state of good repair,
- [00:20:11.378]investing enough in the graders and excavators
- [00:20:16.427]and front end loaders and snow plows that it takes
- [00:20:20.019]to operate the highway network.
- [00:20:22.906]Keeping the buildings in a state of good repair.
- [00:20:26.215]Budgeting for that, again, you need to develop
- [00:20:30.786]performance measures in order to tell you
- [00:20:34.763]what you need to be investing your money in
- [00:20:37.093]or what will happen if you don't.
- [00:20:40.368]We think that rises to the critical levels
- [00:20:43.312]of the rest of these.
- [00:20:45.375]Finally fiscal responsibility.
- [00:20:48.190]Since the moneys we get are taxpayers money,
- [00:20:51.584]we are accountable to the citizens
- [00:20:54.844]for what we do with our money.
- [00:20:56.712]So everything we do, everything we invest our money in,
- [00:21:01.005]needs to be transparent and we need to be accountable
- [00:21:04.306]to the taxpayers name.
- [00:21:07.193]This is why we spent your tax money here.
- [00:21:10.296]It's to attain one of these eight strategic goals,
- [00:21:14.722]and here's how we're doing and in many cases
- [00:21:18.732]it's but the current revenue is performance measures
- [00:21:28.911]for your pavement is slip from a rating of 85
- [00:21:34.445]to a rating of 74.
- [00:21:37.543]So you have data driven information to back up your-
- [00:21:45.358]So this was the framework that I used to
- [00:21:51.660]discuss this with my top leadership group.
- [00:21:54.561]They've been broken up into teams
- [00:21:58.074]and each one of them had been assigned one of the
- [00:22:00.594]strategic goals to either maintain or supplement
- [00:22:06.831]the existing corporate performance measures that we have,
- [00:22:10.760]relative to those eight strategic emphasis areas.
- [00:22:14.361]And we'll be reconvening at the end of this month
- [00:22:17.294]in Nebraska City, and we'll devote two days to going through
- [00:22:22.024]in greater detail, what performance measures
- [00:22:24.836]we can set up to make sure that we're moving forward
- [00:22:29.470]along these eight strategic goals.
- [00:22:33.823]So before I open this up to any questions or answers,
- [00:22:41.883]I am also available online at our website.
- [00:22:46.592]Some of the data that I'm talking about
- [00:22:48.954]that comprises our performance measures, we actually have
- [00:22:54.193]a performance score card measure where you can tell
- [00:23:01.589]at a glance what's important.
- [00:23:06.381]For instance, the number of fatalities on Nebraska roadways.
- [00:23:12.337]Expressed is traffic fatalities
- [00:23:15.114]per 100 vehicle miles traveled.
- [00:23:19.794]The current statistic is there's one fatality
- [00:23:22.776]per 100 million vehicle miles traveled.
- [00:23:27.658]We set a strategic goal five years out to cut that in half.
- [00:23:32.086]To cut that rate in half from 1.0 to 0.5 and the progress
- [00:23:40.991]indicated, the green indicates we're trading
- [00:23:45.016]in a favorable condition, yellow says the trend is holding,
- [00:23:49.946]or red says the performance is unfavorable.
- [00:23:56.316]So just to dive a little bit more deeply on that
- [00:24:00.045]safety performance measure, this is the kind of
- [00:24:05.086]performance measure that we invest in the more we keep.
- [00:24:14.826]It's a table of information as
- [00:24:17.335]the calendar year along in the rows.
- [00:24:20.886]In the first column is the number of fatalities
- [00:24:24.287]on the Nebraska highway system that occurred in that year.
- [00:24:28.642]So you can see that in 2002 there were 307 fatalities
- [00:24:35.806]on the Nebraska highway.
- [00:24:38.572]One of the things that I'm very proud of is that
- [00:24:42.057]in 2006 we published the first Nebraska Strategic
- [00:24:47.981]Highway Safety Plan, in which we set the goal of 1.0
- [00:24:53.817]fatalities per 100 vehicle miles.
- [00:24:57.177]You can see that 2006 the actual performance measure
- [00:25:01.454]at that time was 1.4.
- [00:25:04.478]And that meant 276 people died in that year.
- [00:25:10.388]Our goal was if we achieved 1.0, which we did,
- [00:25:17.282]would have been 80.
- [00:25:21.055]96-
- [00:25:29.254]We thought that was a stretch goal at the time.
- [00:25:32.820]And we did it by determining what the main emphasis
- [00:25:36.338]areas needed to be using data and that was
- [00:25:40.683]getting people to wear their seatbelts,
- [00:25:43.169]getting impaired drivers off the road,
- [00:25:46.643]focusing on younger drivers and older drivers,
- [00:25:52.232]and preventing run off the road crashes.
- [00:25:56.328]We flexed the law of our money from building
- [00:26:00.127]the infrastructure to behavioral problems.
- [00:26:02.695]Seat belts is a behavioral problem.
- [00:26:04.556]Impaired driving enforcement is a behavioral problem.
- [00:26:08.118]We put a lot of our emphasis there, and I really believe
- [00:26:12.875]our strategic efforts contributed to-
- [00:26:18.382]You can't say we can take credit for all 96 lives saved
- [00:26:23.038]because if you remember between the years 2006 2011
- [00:26:27.593]the economy did some funny things too.
- [00:26:30.618]So there were fewer people driving fewer miles.
- [00:26:34.596]That contributed to our favorable results
- [00:26:37.361]but I absolutely believe that our strategic efforts
- [00:26:41.328]saved a lot of those lives too.
- [00:26:46.303]So 181 fatalities is the 1.0 goal.
- [00:26:55.111]Our new goal is to cut that number down to 90 in a year.
- [00:27:00.962]Any death is too many deaths.
- [00:27:03.360]We're on a mission to go towards 0 deaths but you get there
- [00:27:07.658]by incrementally sending yourself measurable stretch goals.
- [00:27:13.284]I just think this is one of the best illustrative cases
- [00:27:18.381]for what performance measures can do for an organization.
- [00:27:22.805]I want to selectively go through some of the others
- [00:27:26.190]because they fit in with the civil engineering education.
- [00:27:34.043]This measure is very much a work under development.
- [00:27:38.930]Very much we'll be looking to the university
- [00:27:41.131]to help us partner with-
- [00:27:45.144]It's the measurement of the number of road closures
- [00:27:53.095]on interstate 80 due to crashes and particularly
- [00:27:57.231]the average number minutes per closure.
- [00:28:01.254]So there's a crash on the Omaha freeway system
- [00:28:05.756]and one or two of the lanes is out of commission,
- [00:28:09.732]and there's a traffic jam.
- [00:28:11.390]And now the clock is running.
- [00:28:14.033]How long before we can restore
- [00:28:16.223]the pre event level of service?
- [00:28:19.786]But we have a district operations center that has a
- [00:28:23.215]series of cameras on the freeway system.
- [00:28:26.814]We have embedded instrumentation that tells us
- [00:28:30.290]what the average travel speed is,
- [00:28:33.313]for the tuner cars operating on the interstate.
- [00:28:37.127]We drill with the state patrol or the Omaha Police
- [00:28:41.602]and the ambulance drivers on what to do
- [00:28:45.452]when there is an incidint, in order to move the cars
- [00:28:49.170]out of the way and restore the traffic
- [00:28:50.615]to it's pre event pace.
- [00:28:55.539]We don't always do a great job of that.
- [00:28:57.193]A lot of times, there's a crash out there,
- [00:28:59.594]there's wreckage around, the police want to treat it
- [00:29:02.742]like a crime scene, and block it off and out of my way
- [00:29:07.697]I own these two lanes for the next five hours.
- [00:29:10.687]You have to change that culture to say that's not
- [00:29:14.502]doing the driving public any favors.
- [00:29:19.312]So let's get first protect the victims and make sure
- [00:29:23.197]they're removed from harm's way.
- [00:29:24.927]Then let's move the investigation stuff off the roadway
- [00:29:29.155]and restore the interstate to mobility.
- [00:29:33.862]What happens in the operations center, the camera,
- [00:29:38.486]the communication, the embedded censors,
- [00:29:41.021]it's all very much, and Al, and Larry, and Ron
- [00:29:46.449]and company help us decide what it is that the
- [00:29:50.338]intelligent transportation system can provide
- [00:29:54.066]to make our performance better
- [00:29:57.246]in terms of system reliability.
- [00:30:00.597]Another key one I want to share with you is
- [00:30:04.981]pavement condition.
- [00:30:08.700]Mainly because as I mentioned early,
- [00:30:14.084]our asset network is valued at $7.5 billion,
- [00:30:19.254]probably $6.5 billion of that is in the pavement.
- [00:30:25.176]We have an awful lot of money invested in concrete
- [00:30:27.745]and asphalt, and that 10,000 mile network.
- [00:30:31.436]And it is constantly degrading.
- [00:30:34.791]Either from axle poundings from the trucks and the cars,
- [00:30:37.893]or from the weather cycle, that pavement is constantly
- [00:30:41.327]being under assault.
- [00:30:44.889]We invest an awful lot of money in an annual inspection
- [00:30:49.321]mile by mile.
- [00:30:50.328]I told you when I started I was in a van that drove
- [00:30:53.533]every mile on every highway.
- [00:30:54.939]That's a lot more sophisticated these days.
- [00:30:57.173]It's not a camera up there.
- [00:30:59.160]It's instrumentation, it's measuring the surface condition,
- [00:31:03.588]the cracking, the falling, the actual pavement condition,
- [00:31:09.805]mile by mile on the highway system.
- [00:31:12.240]That's converted into a
- [00:31:14.517]serviceability network that's numerical.
- [00:31:21.050]And then you can translate a number to miles that are
- [00:31:24.697]very good, good, poor, or fair condition.
- [00:31:29.710]That's how we communicate to the legislature
- [00:31:32.688]and others about whether we're holding our own
- [00:31:34.925]with pavement conditions.
- [00:31:37.818]We're actually we've shifted our priorities to use
- [00:31:44.741]to take our revenues and do the asset preservation first
- [00:31:48.464]before we do any capital improvement projects
- [00:31:52.017]to remove congestion., because we're not getting
- [00:31:54.714]enough revenue to keep our pavements in the state of repair
- [00:31:59.511]that we need to keep them in.
- [00:32:02.120]Again, it's the critical nature of the performance measures
- [00:32:05.383]that communicate that and the people
- [00:32:08.202]who generate your revenue,
- [00:32:09.568]the people who you expect to perform.
- [00:32:19.498]So there are 26 performance measures.
- [00:32:21.363]They're not exactly aligned yet with the eight
- [00:32:24.594]strategic goals that we are developing and
- [00:32:28.031]my challenge to my leadership team is we can do better.
- [00:32:32.659]There are probably performance measures that get
- [00:32:35.346]to the heart of the matter better than the ones
- [00:32:37.293]that we have now.
- [00:32:39.111]Let's develop those.
- [00:32:41.269]Let's think through this together
- [00:32:44.621]and that's really where I am
- [00:32:47.063]with my executive leadership team.
- [00:32:51.903]With that, I really encourage you to open up
- [00:32:57.054]to any questions for me, either about strategic
- [00:33:01.609]goal setting, anything about my career path
- [00:33:05.585]in the department of Roads.
- [00:33:13.558]Who's going to be first?
- [00:33:14.391]Surely there's-
- [00:33:18.291]Yes!
- [00:33:35.792]We're a multi disciplinary agency these days.
- [00:33:39.758]Definitely we're an engineering bias.
- [00:33:43.977]We have 150 engineers and we are constantly hiring
- [00:33:50.980]at the entry level engineers pre professional license.
- [00:34:00.743]Roadway design, utilities of coordination,
- [00:34:06.747]traffic engineering, project development.
- [00:34:11.373]So there's a lot of water; hydraulics and hydrology.
- [00:34:15.512]There's a lot of discipline based engineering careers.
- [00:34:19.027]There's also biologist environmental practitioners
- [00:34:22.870]is very key to us these days.
- [00:34:28.909]Ride away activities is more of a
- [00:34:31.923]real estate based background.
- [00:34:34.805]Communication is our key to a lot of activities.
- [00:34:42.159]So planning transportation planning, another key area
- [00:34:48.981]where we would recruit people.
- [00:35:24.469]For Nebraskans, we are a large rural state.
- [00:35:31.094]So our transportation network is about
- [00:35:35.894]bringing passenger cars or agricultural product
- [00:35:41.105]or freight into the metro area markets from Rural Nebraska.
- [00:35:47.719]So keeping that system in a state of good repair
- [00:35:50.811]is no question our principal challenge.
- [00:35:54.729]But also in the metro areas, there are parts of the
- [00:35:59.891]existing network that are congested.
- [00:36:02.418]If you drive from Lincoln to Omaha regularly
- [00:36:05.406]at rush hour in the morning, there are parts of
- [00:36:07.725]interstate 80 where you can count on every morning
- [00:36:10.373]traffic's gonna be 20 miles an hour, and not the usual
- [00:36:14.517]65 miles an hour through those locations.
- [00:36:18.558]See the challenge for us is to
- [00:36:21.988]have the revenue ready and being able to fit it into
- [00:36:25.300]our priorities to build the traffic relief projects
- [00:36:30.764]to remove those congestion bottlenecks.
- [00:36:38.910]There's as we project for the metro, Omaha traffic
- [00:36:45.389]there's gonna be a needed for the investment
- [00:36:48.158]of another loop for the interstate.
- [00:36:50.472]Or, if that's serious alternative that competes
- [00:36:54.355]with an outer loop of the interstate would be
- [00:36:58.899]a difference of travel patterns.
- [00:37:01.338]If there's a transit or in the development
- [00:37:04.598]you see in many of the country's major metros.
- [00:37:08.016]Well there's higher density apartment units, rather than
- [00:37:12.893]suburban single attached houses, and they're developed
- [00:37:16.286]along transit; good reliable bus system routes.
- [00:37:23.079]That could take the place of another alternative
- [00:37:27.996]interstate loop around Omaha.
- [00:37:31.745]That's an important decision you're going to be making
- [00:37:35.590]with less than perfect information.
- [00:37:45.620]Revenue is always a challenge there.
- [00:37:49.797]You got eight strategic goals, you got performance targets.
- [00:37:53.644]Now you know how much revenue you need to hit those targets.
- [00:37:59.056]It's not enough.
- [00:38:00.954]We don't have enough coming in now to keep the system
- [00:38:05.086]in a state of good repair and mobile enough to do
- [00:38:10.005]what I think people expect of their transportation.
- [00:38:18.846]You'll have to trust us that we're good stewards with the
- [00:38:21.404]money that have given.
- [00:38:23.550]If we lose confidence that we're not managing
- [00:38:26.409]the existing money that we have,
- [00:38:29.187]we'll never get the revenues it takes to do these things.
- [00:38:33.893]I consider that a huge challenge,
- [00:38:36.459]and then we're in a global marketplace now.
- [00:38:41.834]The people who are producing corn and soybeans in Nebraska
- [00:38:46.051]are competing in a global market with their
- [00:38:49.026]corn and soybeans from people in Brazil, Singapore,
- [00:38:52.989]or whatever, and if our transportation system
- [00:38:57.143]is not efficient, they're at a competitive disadvantage
- [00:39:00.375]with those other global trading entities.
- [00:39:04.296]So a challenge for us to see ourselves as part of
- [00:39:07.817]an integrated global network.
- [00:39:14.718]Yes?
- [00:39:46.790]It's a great question but we are dynamic and nimble enough
- [00:39:51.896]in our programming that we can delay
- [00:39:55.331]a steel concrete project for a driver behavior project.
- [00:40:02.737]In the middle of the fiscal year, if we see that we need to
- [00:40:05.958]make some changes a little bit, we can move rudder
- [00:40:11.450]that away but it takes good data systems in order to know
- [00:40:16.206]when you're there; that's the challenge.
- [00:40:19.848]Another case might be unanticipated bridge failures.
- [00:40:30.456]You just put them up and you weren't anticipating it.
- [00:40:34.208]Now you've gotta fix this bridge.
- [00:40:35.607]It's on a vital transportation link.
- [00:40:39.272]You might have to reallocate $10 million from
- [00:40:44.100]your pavement program to take care of
- [00:40:46.702]a high priority bridge and things like that.
- [00:41:05.827]It's called the Nebraska Servicability Index,
- [00:41:09.303]and it's really not my technical bailiwick but it's
- [00:41:15.380]involves actual physical inspection and so you have
- [00:41:20.753]that highway map cracking writing.
- [00:41:28.045]Various ways the pavement can fail.
- [00:41:30.486]They have either visible or instrument methods
- [00:41:35.683]of seeing what they are in a given highway segment
- [00:41:40.149]and then there's a formula that just translates that
- [00:41:42.250]to a numerical index.
- [00:41:43.862]So if you're rating it on a scale network,
- [00:41:53.814]an 85 is okay but you a really shooting for a
- [00:41:57.448](chuckles) 97, you know.
- [00:41:59.392]That's how it's based, but it is either instrument-
- [00:42:05.268]You can measure the writing as you're driving
- [00:42:09.730]down the road these vehicles do a profile cross sectional
- [00:42:14.516]profile of the roadway and capture it on a data base.
- [00:42:19.341]So they can measure the two wheel paths whether writing is
- [00:42:24.309]9 millimeters or 12 millimeters
- [00:42:28.819]and that goes into the index.
- [00:42:30.765]The surface cracking and faulting when the concrete pavement
- [00:42:36.258]joint separates a little bit, that's the thump thump thump
- [00:42:40.433]you hear when driving down the road.
- [00:42:42.626]That's measured and assessed and converted to an index.
- [00:42:53.220]Are there other questions?
- [00:42:55.076]Yes?
- [00:43:11.797]That's a great question.
- [00:43:16.780]It's the soft skills that really separate the
- [00:43:21.426]producers from the leaders.
- [00:43:23.280]So the first part of your career you spend
- [00:43:26.057]developing the professional competence to be
- [00:43:29.234]an independent producer.
- [00:43:34.319]And then at a certain point you realize
- [00:43:37.006]work gets done by collections and independent producers.
- [00:43:41.094]You've gotta assemble people and get them working together
- [00:43:45.513]for a result, and that's not as easy to do.
- [00:43:49.134]So if you can build teams, do communications,
- [00:43:54.463]do the soft skills, communicating, written communication,
- [00:43:58.978]reading the climate of your team and deciding
- [00:44:03.986]who's playing well with others and who's not playing well
- [00:44:07.088]with others, or what's this team missing?
- [00:44:11.189]Some other successful projects I've had before
- [00:44:13.514]this team's missing something; what is it?
- [00:44:17.410]It's that kind of intangible thing
- [00:44:20.308]basically you get a body of work and
- [00:44:26.552]when you're going for a promotion
- [00:44:28.623]you should have people coming in advocating for you.
- [00:44:32.347]You shouldn't be the only one out there who thinks
- [00:44:34.453](laughs) you're the one deserving a promotion.
- [00:44:38.344]Those would be my secret keys.
- [00:44:56.386]That's a great question and it's always a challenge.
- [00:44:59.783]It's often times I have forums where I'm called
- [00:45:05.283]before the legislature to give a report
- [00:45:07.931]on the state of the highway system.
- [00:45:11.407]It's called the needs done that's the forum I've got
- [00:45:13.893]to say here's what we're contributing to the states
- [00:45:17.657]welfare and wellbeing and I can collaborate with
- [00:45:22.410]department of Economic Development,
- [00:45:25.588]department of Agriculture-
- [00:45:34.428]Agency had meetings from all across the agencies
- [00:45:37.621]of state government.
- [00:45:39.863]We talk to each other there.
- [00:45:41.427]We look for areas of cooperation and collaboration.
- [00:45:50.841]Yes?
- [00:46:09.350]We have a great partnership with the university faculty
- [00:46:13.106]where we are having a dialogue about research that
- [00:46:17.443]we need and faculty is letting us know areas
- [00:46:20.612]of expertise that they have.
- [00:46:22.835]So it's really through our research program and our
- [00:46:26.388]continued network with the university faculty
- [00:46:31.431]and student interns!
- [00:46:33.661]We try to hire student interns so that our work
- [00:46:40.215]and our challenges are shared with the student
- [00:46:44.053]and faculty community here.
- [00:46:57.531]Yes sir?
- [00:47:06.413]One of my midterm and short term plans in sort of-
- [00:47:19.364]You know we have a concrete one in six year plan
- [00:47:28.937]where we say we're going to do a project from
- [00:47:32.247]Lincoln to Grand Island on the interstate in 2013
- [00:47:36.788]and a whole list of other projects
- [00:47:40.051]in the next six years beyond that.
- [00:47:42.735]So we take those public that's very concrete very literal
- [00:47:46.858]about what our upcoming plans are and we take those out
- [00:47:50.200]to the public and they hold us accountable for
- [00:47:53.126]what we said we were gonna spend their money on
- [00:47:56.651]in those years (laughs) and if we don't have the right
- [00:47:59.460]projects on there, we hear about that too.
- [00:48:06.839](laughs) Do it for seven years, what do I pay you for?
- [00:48:11.319]That kind of public involvement is a euphemism sometimes.
- [00:48:17.772]Alright, I thank you for your time and
- [00:48:19.713]inviting me here this morning.
- [00:48:21.665]I'm very glad to be here.
- [00:48:24.062](audience applause)
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