ITD employees grow leadership skills,
innovate at Rapid Innovation Event
More than 150 ITD employees took on the challenge of this year’s Rapid Innovation Event in order to develop their leadership skills and learn scientific approaches to solve workplace challenges.
“This year at the Leadership Summit, we didn’t have a long lineup of prestigious leaders coming to talk you one after the other,” said ITD Chief Administrative Officer Charlene McArthur at the event kickoff. “The goal was to hear from you. We wanted to hear what you’ve learned and what you’ve accomplished.”
For more information about the mission of the Leadership Summit (and the winners), read last week’s Transporter here.
Employees participating in the summit formed into 10 teams. Each team was given a problem to solve and, with the help of coaches and facilitators, worked together to design and implement innovative solutions to solve their problems.Coaches and facilitators were asked to provide direction and guidance, but not a solution - that was the responsibility of the team.
Here’s a breakdown of what those teams accomplished. For more information, contact Ashley Orme.
WEBSITE FROM GOOD TO GREAT
Goal: Visitors to itd.idaho.gov can easily find relevant and accurate information.
Issues: ITD’s website was not compliant with the state-mandated template. It was not mobile friendly, and after more than a decade, the site had ballooned to thousands of pages. The site lacked consistency in messaging/branding and flexibility from a content-management perspective. The content-management system only allowed a few people access to maintain and update content. In addition, ITD’s website was based on the organization's structure and not based on analytics that show what customer are seeking. It was internal-centric versus being customer-focused.
Accomplishments: A new site rolled out Nov. 1 that is mobile-friendly, cleans up the site, and makes it easy for customers to find services. Also, an analytics program will track page visits and place the most-used items in easy-to-find locations.
Future Goals: Create a standard content guidance for web content mangers by building uniformity in style code, fonts, page templates and layouts for web pages, manuals, forms, links and contacts.
Project Sponsors: Vince Trimboli, Mollie McCarty
Subject Matter Experts: Tony Garcia, Tyler Jackson, Dave Merriweather, Pauline Davis
STREAMLINE DMV CASH RECEIPTS PROCESSING FINANCIAL INTEGRITY UNIT (FIU) SERVICES
Goal: Reduce the time it takes to process cash receipts handled by FIU.
Issues: The protocol to process requests touched multiple hands and transferred in and out of a “cash drawer” that slowed down the process time and made it more likely for clerical errors to occur. Customers would wait an average of 4.69 days for the request to be processed.
Accomplishments: Developed a new workflow that reduces the number of people necessary to process requests. This will add staff to the unit while saving more than 1,400 hours per year. It also reduced processing time from more than four days to finishing within day one.
Future Goals: Finish implementation of new plan by end of December 2016. Additionally, the team suggests creating a barcode system to track and update customers’ information.
Sponsors: Alan Frew, Dave Tollman
Subject Matter Experts: Lisa McClellan, Tom Brock, Beverlie Edwards
UPDATE AND STANDARDIZE CONCRETE SPECIFICATIONS
Goal: Modernize ITD’s Standard Concrete Specifications.
Issues: ITD sets forth specifications to contractors that are method-based and place responsibility for the project’s outcome on the department. Those specs can be outdated and include redundant actions, such as certifications followed by extensive testing.
Accomplishments: This past year, a team lead by D3 Engineer Amy Revis has reviewed the specifications to find redundancies, antiquated methods of measurements, excessive testing for items with a low risk or consequence of failure, and to balance the risk and workload between ITD and the contractor.
Future Goals: Draft detailed specification changes and to coordinate these recommended changes with the FHWA and the AGC. New specs should be performance-based with contractors owning responsibility of end product.
Sponsor: Engineering Services
Subject Matter Expert: John Bilderback
DEVELOP NEXT STEPS IN CONSTRUCTIVE CULTURE PLAN
Goal: Identify steps to reduce aggressive and passive actions and promote constructive actions throughout the department.
Issues: Too much red and green in constructive culture map. There is no comprehensive, defined action plan to “move the needle” on these cultural goals.
Accomplishments: The team conducted extensive interviews with employees to learn what actions have already promoted blue behavior and what is contributing to red or green behavior. This data showed that communication between supervisors and frontline workers was necessary to realize success in implementing the Constructive Culture Plan.
Future Goals: Create an Employee Advocacy Group that regularly meets with employees and supervisors to discuss current culture and solutions. The goal is to build trust and increase two-way communication between groups.
Sponsor: Brenda Williams
Subject Matter Expert: Tim Coupling of Human Synergistics
ELIMINATE BACKLOG IN IDAHO CRASH DATA REPORTING
Goal: Streamline evaluation of annual crash data.
Issues: The Office of Highway Safety analyzes every crash that is entered into E-Impact by Idaho State Police. This takes months to complete, creating a perpetual backlog of work that delays data-driven safety improvement projects.
Accomplishments: Developed a scientific approach to data analysis. Analysts will prioritize fatal or serious crashes and check a representative sample of all other crash data. The team also suggested encouraging law enforcement officers to use ITD’s Geographic Information System (GIS) to enter accurate location details of crashes.
Future Goals: Create a mobile app police can use to fill out crash data. Additionally, make the way that data is filled out linear to ensure appropriate information gets back to analysts.
Sponsor: Kimbol Allen
Subject Matter Expert: John Tomlinson
STREAMLINE EQUIPMENT SURPLUS PROCESS
Goal: Improving the process of liquidating surplus technology machines.
Issues: ETS must wipe clean and catalogue every computer after its 2-3 year lifecycle. This process is full of time delays, potential for lost computers, and lost paperwork. It also impacts yearly inventory updates, reviews, and licensing costs for computer programs.
Accomplishments: Developed a protocol to digitize inventory and surplus process. This allows for real-time inventory tracking and increases efficiency. This will save labor, prevent lost items, and reduce the number of software licenses in use.
Future Goals: Implement new surplus protocol.
Sponsors: Chris Victory, Jake Duplessie
IMPROVE OFFSITE BOARD-MEETING TECHNOLOGY
Goal: Optimize remote Idaho Transportation Board meetings to improve reliability of video stream.
Issues: Multiple ETS employees are needed to set up and monitor audio/video needs of the Board roadshow, which takes place over six months. There is no standard operating procedure and no minimum requirement guide for venues hosting these events.
Accomplishments: Inventoried and categorized all necessary equipment for the events. Created a standard operating procedure so any ETS employee can fulfill the work. Developed a guideline of minimum requirements a venue must have to successfully execute the Board roadshow.
Future Goals: Test and refine SOP.
Sponsors: Char McArthur, Chris Victory
Subject Matter Expert: Jeff Carpenter
STANDARDIZE TOOL ORGANIZATION FOR MAINTENANCE SHEDS AND MECHANIC SHOPS
Goal: Implement the “5S” (sort, shine, set in order, standardize, sustain) model of workplace organization to save money, time, and improve safety.
Issues: The sheds and shops are in varying states of organization. This leads to potentially losing tools and equipment, lost time when completing a job, and unsafe work conditions.
Accomplishments: Worked with four volunteer sheds to implement the 5S model. Those sheds have cleaner, safer work areas that are reducing time wasted looking for parts or tools. Sheds are encouraged to promote individual and team accountability and sustain the model.
Future Goals: Incentivize compliance of 5s model for other sheds. Share successes of sheds implementing 5s to encourage application of model throughout ITD.
Sponsors: Devin Rigby, Dave Kuisti
STREAMLINE CONTRACTOR COMPLIANCE WITH FEDERAL NON-DISCRIMINATION REGULATIONS
Goal: Increase Title VI Compliance among recipients of federal funds.
Issues: Currently, there are more than 190 sub-recipients of funds required to comply with Federal Civil Rights laws, or Title VI. Only 70 recipients are in compliance. ITD only has one employee to help recipients get into compliance.
Accomplishments: Created easy-to-follow checklist for recipients to get into compliance. Also, we made a short video explaining how to achieve compliance. This reduces the dependence recipients have for one-on-one teaching from our employees.
Future Goals: Develop more instructional videos as resources for federal fund recipients.
Sponsors: Jim Carpenter, Brenda Williams
Subject Matter Expert: Russ Rivera
STREAMLINE PROCESS FOR BUYING SUPPLIES IN THE DISTRICTS
Goal: Reduce steps required for mechanics to buy parts — create a faster, more efficient process.
Issues: Vehicle-maintenance staff must wait for up to three days to get the items they need to complete services on ITD vehicles. Processes for ordering can vary by district, involve are least three ITD employees, and rely on manual transactions.
Accomplishments: Developed streamlined workflow by learning from private mechanic shops. Created a new order form that creates standard parts order procedure. These changes will save 4,000 – 8,000 labor hours per year.
Future Goals: Create a vendor-managed inventory and write a program to automate form composition.
Sponsor: Todd Sorensen
Subject Matter Experts: Each District’s Supply Operations Supervisor, Financial Specialist, and Business Supply Manager
Published 11-11-16