Improving the Highway Performance Monitoring System: Lean Event Helps Team 

By Campbell Pontin, Media & Marketing Intern

June 4, 2019

Every year, the Highway Performance Monitoring System (HPMS) team compiles analyzed data from Colorado’s highways and sends it to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) for review. In 2014, the requirements for this report increased from 9,000 miles of highway data to 90,000 miles. These more rigorous requirements presented a challenge for the Colorado Department of Transportation’s (CDOT) HPMS team. After experiencing difficulties meeting the June 1 deadline, CDOT initiated an improvement process for HPMS reporting in December 2017. This improvement effort, which included a Lean event and a peer exchange, has resulted in faster reporting and a more streamlined process for providing data to FHWA.

Learning from Lean

“The Lean event really helped us to identify our bottlenecks, our obstacles, and figure out ways that we could improve on our process. As a follow up to that, we did a peer exchange where we essentially picked the brains of other states that were having similar issues with meeting FHWA timeline and requirements,'' says Phyllis Snider, project leader for the HPMS improvement effort. Since the Lean event and peer exchange, Snider and her team have filled a crucial vacant position and have made improvements to the Highway Users Tax Fund (HUTF) editing timeline. The HPMS team previously spent five months editing the HUTF, but have since been able to streamline their editing process down to three months, plus another month for validation.

Another roadblock identified in the Lean event was the use of two linear reference systems (LRS), which required the team to conduct unnecessary rework by manually inputting data into each system. The team is now in the process of moving to a single LRS system, which presents unique challenges in and of itself. This change affects the way that other business units provide data to the HPMS team, so a considerable amount of change management has to be conducted to build awareness of the need for change, as well as a desire to change. Erik Sabina, a member of the project team, notes that “the issues and challenges will be very similar to any sort of major change event in that people are used to working in a certain way. If you are in the process of getting them to work in a different way, it generates fear, which a lot of the time starts from the unknown. That’s one of the things I’ve learned, that we need to be a lot more clear about what it is we’re actually intending.” Pending the successful adoption of a single LRS system, the data reporting process for HPMS will be more streamlined.

The Future of HPMS

The HPMS team is already looking ahead to tackle additional FHWA requirements for reporting that go into effect in 2028. A major component of these requirements involves incorporating data from intersections into the Model Inventory of Roadway Elements, which aids in the development of safety related data.

These 2028 requirements highlight a 21st century issue that the HPMS team has already experienced in their transition to a single LRS: adapting to constantly changing technology. Sabina comments, “we’re operating in a changing environment. The data sources that are out there, and the technology that we’re using to manage and acquire data are changing fairly rapidly. So hitting a target that’s ten years out is a challenging enterprise when you know that the tools you’re going to have are changing in ways that are sometimes really hard to predict.”

Snider echoes Sabina’s point, explaining one of her major takeaways from the project is that, “with the way technology is advancing, you can’t stay in the same place. You can’t continue to do what you’ve always been doing. You’ve got to be able to change, move forward, and do things in a better, more efficient way.”