Victoria Farberov

By Victoria Farberov, Process Improvement Intern

August 13, 2021

As I have less than one week left of my internship, I reflect back on my time here at the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) and my internship as a whole. It all happened so fast and it feels like just yesterday that I was starting out. I started my internship on January 11th, 2021 and was an intern at CDOT in the Office of Process Improvement for almost 8 months. In the past 8 months I have worked on countless projects and each one left lasting impacts on me and will guide me throughout my career.  

From the second day I began  participating in meetings for the Concept to Project (C2P) Program. I didn’t know at that time how big this project was going to be and how much work I would put into it! C2P became a main focus of my internship. I am so very lucky that I have gotten to see it through until it went live, which is happening in a few days. This project has taught me so many skills, including change management, project management, and communication. It has been a big effort that has included people from all across CDOT and has definitely grown my network. The project looks at creating transparency for all of CDOT around all of the current business improvement projects that are currently underway. It brings attention to these types of projects and our team offers services to those leading these projects.  We offer consultations, guidance and mentorship for project and change leaders if they desire it. We also offer tools, training, and a website where all these things and more are located. I was lucky enough to be a part of designing and delivering many of these products and making them available to CDOT employees. 

Although C2P has been a big effort that I have spent a lot of time on during my time here at CDOT, I have also been involved in other efforts like Lean Every Day ideas (LEI). I participated in the most recent video series, “Sharing Innovation Success in Engineering and Construction” as well as helping to create the newly named, “🍂 Falling in love with Maintenance Innovations 🍂” series, which is in the beginning stages of production. I have worked with different innovators across Colorado and talked to them about their innovations and how they have been successful in helping CDOT become more efficient and more effective. 

I also took over being in charge of Intern Involvement later in my internship. I took on the role of setting up lunch and learns, trips, and different events for all CDOT interns. We recently took a trip out to the Eisenhower Johnson Tunnels for a tour. It was such an amazing and unique experience. I set up this tour and brought 17 interns with me to go see the cool things they are doing up there. It was great to meet other interns in person as most of us have been working in a virtual environment during our entire internship. It was a great experience that helped us bond and also learn more about some of the other work and positions at CDOT. 

Another interesting project that I became involved in was  working on a project called Operation Good Neighbors. This is an ongoing process improvement project. The cross-agency team looked at the current state of the Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) process. Next, the team dove into how to improve it and designed a desired future state process. This team really took out a lot of waste in the process and made some significant improvements. It has been a fun project to work on as I got to bring out my Visio and flowcharting skills for this effort, which is something I love to do! 

The best part of this internship has been all of the opportunities that I was provided and experiences I was exposed to during my time at CDOT.  I was able to get two different certifications during my time here. I took a SCRUM Masters course and earned a certification as a SCRUM master. SCRUM is part of the Agile Framework and was developed to help project teams solve complex problems and deliver high value products. This is something that I never thought I would do, but something that I found really interesting and am excited that I got to learn more about how to manage projects using SCRUM. I also participated and produced multiple change management courses. I then participated in CDOT’s 3 day Change Management Course for Practitioners and earned a certification as a Prosci Certified Practitioner. These skills are extremely valuable and apply to any industry so I know I will use them in my future job endeavors. 

As my internship is coming to an end, I am thankful for all the opportunities I was exposed to and the many projects that I participated on during my tenure as an intern in the Office of Process Improvement. I am also so grateful for the wonderful team that I worked with and who have taught me so much. Working with the other interns in CDOT has been a joy and I'm happy to have made friends that will remain part of my circle into the future.

As I prepare to move to the UK in less than one month, I am leaving knowing this won’t be my last interaction with CDOT and the OPI office. The work this office does is something that will be applicable to my future work and the bonds that have been created won’t easily be broken. Thank you CDOT and thank you OPI!