NEW! CDOT’s Concept to Project (C2P) Program
Working to support the delivery of successful business improvement projects, increasing transparency and ensuring that everyone impacted by change is successful with that change.
Written By: Michelle Malloy, Senior Program Manager
Edited By: Victoria Farberov and Kelly Hanson, Interns in the Office of Process Improvement
August 5, 2021
The Colorado Department of Transportation's (CDOT’s) Office of Process Improvement (OPI) is excited to announce the launch of the Concept to Project (C2P) Program. The initial goals of C2P are to:
Provide a one-stop shop for business improvement projects with a robust list of services including tools, resources, training, consultation services and a support network
Provide a transparent look for all Team CDOT’ers into all the business improvement projects happening at CDOT
Help everyone who is impacted by change be successful with that change
The program is anticipated to ‘go-live’ in early August with the release of CDOT’s New C2P Hub. The C2P Hub (Internal Website) will be a very robust and informative website that will add value to all CDOT’ers. The program is being led by Senior Program Manager Michelle Malloy and is being designed by a cross-functional team consisting of employees from a wide range of CDOT offices.
Please continue reading to find out more about 1) why C2P is important, 2) the key benefits it provides for CDOT’s employees, supervisors, project teams, and leaders, and 3) to learn about the C2P team.
First, What is a Business Improvement Project and Where do they Originate?
CDOT is known for its design and construction projects and we have successfully been delivering these projects for over 100 years! There is another type of project that happens all the time at CDOT and these are projects that are done to improve our business. These projects are done by our innovative Team CDOT’ers and could be things like process improvement efforts, technology or system improvements, restructuring, business model changes, or basically anything that improves the business and creates changes that impact our internal and external customers.
CDOT’s Business Improvement Projects originate in many different areas: Divisions, Regions, task forces, committees, councils and groups. There are so many different areas where business improvement efforts are ‘born’ inside CDOT it is truly astounding. This shows how innovative CDOT’ers truly are when it comes to improving how CDOT works! C2P will work to partner with everyone that sponsors or leads business improvement projects to increase transparency as well as offer a wide range of services.
Diagram displaying the different groups that C2P projects originate from
Why C2P?
Why does CDOT need a program for its business improvement projects? Many of CDOT’s business improvement projects struggle to produce their intended outcomes due to a wide variety of causes. These can range from lack of sponsorship, lack of project management experience or awareness of basic project management tools, lack of change management or simply timing of a project. C2P will help business improvement leaders work through challenges and provide them with tools, resources, training, consultation, mentorship and networking opportunities.
Diagram of how C2P benefits you
At CDOT, currently, no one really understands how many business improvements that are currently underway or planned for the future. This has resulted in redundant efforts and this lack of information impacts business decisions. C2P will provide a central location that will list all of CDOT’s business improvements as well as allow for an easy to use dashboard and this will create transparency for everyone at CDOT.
Additionally, the hundreds of business improvements that are underway create a lot of changes to how CDOT’ers work and how our customers interact with us. C2P will support all the roles within CDOT in times of change. C2P wants to ensure that everyone impacted by change is successful with that change.
To address these issues, Sally Chafee, CDOT’s Chief of Staff and C2P’s Primary Sponsor, brought together a team to work toward improving how CDOT supports its business improvement project teams with a main goal of increasing the success of CDOT’s business improvement projects. Additionally, Sally and the C2P’s Sponsor Coalition values having a central location that would increase the transparency of CDOT’s business improvement projects and increasing CDOT’s competency in change as well as increasing CDOT’s capacity for change.
What are the Key Benefits for CDOT’s Employees, Supervisors, Business Improvement Project Teams and Leaders?
The C2P Project Team wants to ensure that C2P provides value to all of CDOT. Read on to find out how C2P will help YOU in your roles at CDOT!
Employees
Transparency and Awareness: Employees all across CDOT are impacted by business improvement changes everyday. Want to see what projects are happening around CDOT? You will have access to a business improvement project list so that you can check out the changes that are impacting your area and specifically YOU.
Empowerment and Innovation: All employees are encouraged to improve their own processes at CDOT, C2P will help them do that. By pointing employees to CDOT’s Lean Everyday Ideas Program, crowdsourcing business concepts that will improve how CDOT works, to providing simple tools and resources, all employees at CDOT will find useful items in the C2P Hub.
Supervisors
Transparency, Awareness and Preparation: Business improvement projects create changes in how CDOT works. CDOT Supervisors play many roles in times of change: Communicator, Liaison, Advocate, Resistance Manager and Coach. By being able to see all of the planned changes in the centralized dashboard of business improvement projects, CDOT Supervisors will be able to prepare themselves and their employees for change. The project list will also empower CDOT Supervisors to communicate with project teams to ask questions and find out more about the changes impacting them and their staff.
Business Improvement Project Leaders and Change Managers
Tools, Resources, Training, Consultation Services and Networking: If you have ever led a business improvement project, you know it isn’t easy. However, it does make life easier when you have access to process improvement, project management and change management tools, resources, training, consultation services, networking and mentorship opportunities. With C2P, Project Leaders and Change Managers will have a central location to access information and tools on how to plan, manage, reinforce and close their business improvement projects. They will also be able to connect to experts to help them deliver successful projects!
Leadership
Transparency: Leadership values transparency and C2P’s centralized business improvement project list will provide this. By having a central location where all business improvement projects are located, Leadership will easily be able to see all the business improvement projects happening inside of CDOT. The information in the project list will give a quick overview of the projects, which will be another helpful tool to see how CDOT is aligning with overall CDOT goals and on a broader level our statewide WIGs.
Strategic Planning: C2P’s business improvement project list will be a useful tool and resource for strategic planning in all divisions. The project list will allow Division Directors to see what business improvement projects are currently happening and what projects are coming up next. They can use this information to align their own divisional strategy with the other division’s strategic direction.
Change Impact Planning: Having the ability to align across divisions will help to alleviate change saturation for support offices and for those being impacted by the change itself. By having this insight, Division Directors will have useful information to help them align across the department, have conversations with each other to create economies of scale (saving CDOT time and money), and ensuring that CDOT is monitoring levels of change throughout the department.
Meet the C2P Project Team
The C2P project team is a diverse, cross-functional team with decades of combined experience in engineering, IT, change management, project management, leadership, maintenance, operations, and most importantly, in CDOT!
C2P Project Team:
Michelle Malloy, Senior Program Manager, Process Improvement and C2P Program Manager
Emma Boff, EIT III, DMO ITS Program Support
Jocelyn Higashide, Professional Engineer, Region 1
Jonathan Enser, Project & Program Management Systems, CE Chief Data Office Services
Nell Conti, GIS Section Manager, DTD Info Mgt Branch
Roselle Drahushak-Crow, Professional Engineer, Program Reporting and Transparency Office
Mike Krochalis, Deputy Finance Officer, DAF Financial Mgt & Budget Branch
Ryan Sorensen, Professional Engineer, Region 1
Erik Sabina, Information Management Branch Manager, DTD Info Mgt Branch
Ashley Nylen, Assistant Director for Mobility Technology, OIM Mobility Technology
Rob Bruening, Project Manager, DMO ITS Program Support
Victoria Farberov, Intern, Process Improvement
Stacy Stoffregen, Intern, Process Improvement
Mariah Wagner, Intern, Process Improvement
Kelly Hanson, Intern, Process Improvement
Ginger Kloska, Fellow, Process Improvement
C2P Sponsor Team:
Sally Chafee, Chief of Staff and Primary C2P Sponsor
Herman Stockinger, Executive Deputy Director
Gary Vansuch, Director of Process Improvement
Jeff Sudmeier, Director, CFO
Steve Harelson, Chief Engineer
Richard Zamora, Region 2 RTD
John Lorme, Director of Division of Maintenance and Operations
Kay Kelly, Chief of Innovation Mobility
Gregg Miller, Business Process Architect
Hear What People are Saying About C2P
“From experience, I know project and change management can be difficult. And, it can be so easy to get stuck. So, I am very excited to provide the C2P services for CDOT’ers to help them deliver successful business improvements. Also, these projects tend to create changes for all CDOT’ers. I am looking forward to continuing to work with all roles in CDOT to ensure that everyone impacted by change is successful with that change.” - Michelle Malloy, Senior Program Manager, C2P Program Leader
“As we all know, CDOT is a big organization and has a lot of simultaneous business improvement projects occurring at any given point in time. In fact, there's so many activities happening at the same time that many employees may not even be aware that something they're struggling with is being worked on somewhere else in the organization. That’s why I am looking forward to C2P’s Business Improvement Project List. This effort will help ensure all of the cross-cutting projects will have visibility and we can leverage our resources more effectively.” - Richard Zamora, RTD Director, C2P Sponsor Team Member
“C2P ties right into our enduring CDOT Values, especially our Excellence Value, which pledges all of us to be “continuously improving our products and services”. And, it’s not enough to just say that – we need methods and assistance to help us with that, and that is exactly what C2P is! It helps all of us determine the resources and tools that assist us with that continuous improvement. And, C2P also supports all of us with CDOT Customer Value, which encourages us to 'work together and with others to respond effectively to our customer’s needs', and C2P helps with that, too, by providing the transparency that we all want and need for the improvement projects underway." - Gary Vansuch, Director of Process Improvement and C2P Sponsor Coalition Member
"At CDOT, we strive to constantly improve our services, and C2P is no exception. C2P will provide significant value to CDOT employees and provide our teams and leadership better insights into all the improvements happening across the agency. We all know there can be bottlenecks and what seems like unnecessary steps in our business processes. C2P will help break down our department and team silos so that we can all benefit from cross-functional business improvements and help to ensure CDOT is meeting its WIGs and overall goals” - Sally Chafee, Chief of Staff, C2P Sponsor Member
Stay tuned!
Most of the C2P Hub will be released in early August. However, the Concept List, Project List and corresponding dashboards are still in the oven! The team is working hard to pull together all of the project data on all the current business improvement projects. We estimate that these lists and corresponding dashboards will be released sometime in October. Please feel free to visit the C2P Hub now, however, and know we will add more information in the near future. We can’t wait to have you start utilizing all of the great C2P services!
If you have any questions regarding C2P, please feel free to contact C2P’s Program Leader Michelle Malloy at Michelle.Malloy@state.co.us.