Putting Our Innovation To Work

By Dennis Van Patter, CDOT Office of Communications

May 2, 2013

Situation Overview  

The very size and decentralized nature of the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT), with nearly 3,100 employees at more than 250 work locations statewide, makes communications and sharing of ideas challenging at best, and extremely difficult at worst.  Because CDOT has such a diverse, talented, and engaged workforce, it would be of benefit to the department to have a process in place that would encourage and reward sharing of innovative ideas. Over the past few years, many excellent ideas and innovations have been implemented locally without other areas knowing about them.  Other ideas have been kept proprietary at the local level because of a feeling that a great idea, and a cost-saving innovation, was a competitive advantage. Perhaps the large pool of these innovative ideas has been largely ignored. Because of the collective brainpower and ingenuity of the CDOT workforce, a formalized system might be very beneficial to the Department.  A Lean team was organized to examine this entire issue and bring recommendations forward to appropriate CDOT executive leadership.

Project Personnel

Project Sponsor: Tim Harris, CDOT Chief Engineer

Sponsor Coalition:  Scott McDaniel, CDOT Director of Staff Services; Tom Wrona, CDOT Region 2 Transportation Director

Project Team:  Mark Eike (Craig Maintenance Section 6/Team Lead);  Brad Bauer (Pueblo Maintenance Section 4); Roselle Drahushak-Crow (Staff Branches); Chris Brewer (Aurora Maintenance Section 5); Guy Norris (Region 6 Traffic & Safety Section); Ken Martinez (Alamosa Maintenance Section 7); Mickey Madalino (Greeley Maintenance Section 1); D’Wayne Gaymon (Grand Junction Maintenance Section 2); and Kirk Lane (Denver Maintenance Section 8).

Project team members, seated from left:  Brad Bauer, Mark Eike, Roselle Drahushak-Crow, and Chris Brewer.  Standing from left: Kirk Lane, D’Wayne Gaymon, Mickey Madalino, Ken Martinez, and Guy Norris.

What the Team Did

The team was organized and held a Rapid Improvement Event at CDOT Headquarters in Denver April 29-May 3.  This particular Lean process was quite a bit different from many other CDOT Lean initiatives because it examined the need for a formalized process where none currently existed, rather than examining existing processes and recommending improvements in them.

The team was literally able to begin from the ground up to examine what typically occurred after a CDOT employee at any level, in any classification, mentioned an innovative or business improvement idea to a co-worker or supervisor.  After reviewing numerous examples, the team concluded that the lack of a formalized process for dealing with employee ideas typically resulted in those ideas going nowhere – and employees who had the ideas being frustrated with a large and bureaucratic organization.

The team was able to envision ‘what-if’ scenarios from the ground up and develop recommendations on how they believe employee innovations and ideas should best be handled.

Recommendations for Improvement

During its presentation to the sponsor coalition on the morning of May 3, the Lean Design for Innovation team recommended that a formalized process be put in place to gather, evaluate, and recommend implementation for submitted employee ideas and innovations.  This would include:

Establishment of regional and Headquarters committees to collect ideas and innovations.

The team further recommended a structure in which the regional and HQ committees would categorize the ideas and then utilize subject matter experts to analyze them and formulate recommendations for final action on the ideas, including possible implementation.  Feasible ideas that could improve CDOT processes and work places, and could be implemented statewide, would then be referred to a statewide review committee.

The team further recommended strategies for sharing information about innovations and ideas with co-workers and stakeholders all around CDOT, including utilization of a specific site set up on the CDOT Intranet as a type of one-stop-shopping location for everyone who had an idea to submit, was interested in ideas being submitted, or just wanted to monitor the Innovation process on a regular basis.

Targeted Outcomes

Following is a summary of targeted outcomes/goals for this project upon completion:

targeted outcomes

What Team Members are Saying

Team leader Mark Eike:  “We’re building a new process, not analyzing and recommending changes to something that’s existing.  In the maintenance sections, we often talk in passing about the process of submitting ideas that are broad-based and cover all aspects of our CDOT business processes and procedures, but nothing formal existed before now.”

Team member Ken Martinez:  “This is a big process.  It involves trying to change the culture of sharing and cooperation around the department, and balance it with the friendly competition and sometimes territorialism that exists now.  Where we are currently is certainly not where we want to be with this.”

Team member Brad Bauer:  “It’s important to address this whole issue.  It’s important for us to know about these ideas, to consider them and implement the ones that will work for us, so that everyone benefits.”

Team member Chris Brewer:  “This process has been very involved.  The problem is deeper across CDOT than I thought it would be.  It’s been rewarding to be involved with a process that will result in our ability to bring formal recommendations to our sponsor coalition and ultimately to our Region Transportation Directors.  That’s how things can really get done.”

Future Opportunities

There are future opportunities in the area of recognition for employees who submit ideas that are ultimately implemented and prove very helpful and useful to the Department.  Unlike the existing IDEAS Cost Savings Program, which can reward an employee financially for submitting ideas that result in verifiable cost savings, the team envisions recognition on a much wider and more varied scale, including ideas that may improve business or work processes but may not necessarily result in major cost savings.  The team also discussed the potential for recognizing the best innovations and ideas submitted quarterly or annually, utilizing the data collected by the regional and HQ committees, via any combination of the following methods:

Final Thoughts

Discussion and implementation of some sort of formalized process for gathering, categorizing, evaluating, and recommending final action on employee innovations and ideas is long overdue.  CDOT could benefit greatly from that kind of process, and employee morale could be boosted with the knowledge that improvement ideas and innovations are widely accepted, fairly considered, and implemented when feasible, all with proper and appropriate recognition for those CDOT individuals or groups who come up with the ideas.