Improvement to SAP Meets MAP-21 Federal Requirements, Reduces Manual Data Entry

Marcus Ritosa, Process Improvement Intern

November 1, 2013 

How often do we hear that new legislation is going to change the way we do business, for better or for worse?  From time to time, the same happens at the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT). For instance, the “Moving Ahead for Progress in the 21st Century Act” (which is commonly known “MAP-21”) ushered in many changes for CDOT, including revised coding specifications for projects which require Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) authorization. 

Person typing

Improvements to SAP  Meets MAP-21 Federal Requirements

What was improved, briefly

CDOT partnered with the Governor’s Office of Information Technology (OIT) to update our primary computer system, SAP, to modify project files which are submitted to FHWA.  The new output is compliant with FHWA standards required by MAP-21.

Without these changes, FHWA would not be able to authorize any safety-related projects coming from CDOT.  About 50 of these projects are submitted by CDOT annually.  They constitute just under 10% of CDOT’s overall transportation project portfolio.

Additionally, these changes reduce the amount of manual data entry needed for these projects, which improves CDOT’s staff efficiency.

Background

Signed into law by President Barack Obama on July 6, 2012, MAP-21 requires, in part, that project ownership be formally declared and tracked in FHWA reports.  Since this was not previously part of CDOT’s normal SAP workflow, this new capability had to be created. A joint CDOT/OIT project was commissioned to address this need. CDOT’s Tawnya Nicholson and Tony Bemelen served as project leaders, and the effort was sponsored by CDOT’s Director of Major Project Development, Ben Stein.

This Project team discovered that part of SAP’s “Project Builder” functionality required several changes, including the significant creation of tables and fields as well as their validation and testing.  MAP-21 took effect on October 1, 2012, and at that time, the improvement project was able to make enough changes in the SAP system to allow CDOT to be fully compliant on that date for all safety-related projects.

And, building on this success, CDOT is making these enhanced SAP features active and automated for all transportation projects, which will have multiple benefits, including improvements to staff efficiency.  “We’ll have to spend much less time on manual entry,” says CDOT’s Eric Ehrbar, who works directly with the affected parts of SAP.