The mission of most every Department of Transportation (DOT) is to safely and efficiently connect people, places and products in ways that increase the community’s quality of life. This is a vast and noble purpose.
Strategic objectives to satisfy this mission include:
- Maintaining existing assets - taking care of what they already have, such as roads, bridges and other infrastructure.
- Providing continuity of operational services - ensuring transportation services run smoothly and continue without interruptions.
- Building new assets when needed, such as adding new roads or improving public transit, to handle current demands and future growth.
Radically shifting trends are transforming transportation project development in ways that challenge DOT’s ability to meet its critical objectives. In a struggle to adapt to this changing environment, project management techniques tailored to the civil engineering transportation field are evolving — and they may be the much-needed bridge to a new way of operating and succeeding. It is an exciting and transformative time for the emerging discipline of transportation project management.
New Challenge: Doing More with Less
The civil engineering workforce is stretched dangerously thin. Declining student enrollments are book-ended with retirements that represent an enormous loss of leadership, relationships and institutional knowledge. Meanwhile, less experienced professionals are rapidly advancing to decision-making roles without the previously assumed level of design and construction experience. This workforce scarcity impact is exacerbated in the current environment that is flush with work. To continue to deliver more with less, the transportation industry must re-evaluate how they manage both risks and teams at the project, program and portfolio levels.
New Perspective: Budget, Scope and Schedule Revisited
Transportation has inverted the triple constraint. The triple constraint is an established project management model that describes the interdependent relationship of a project’s budget, scope and schedule. You can’t change one without impacting the other two. Historically in transportation, the fixed constraint was scope, and the flexible constraints were budget and schedule.
If it cost a little more or took a little longer, the project would still be built according to prevailing specifications.
The rise of application-based project selection, which prioritizes projects based on a defined scoring criteria, and performance-based design, which focuses on objectives and outcomes over standards, is elevating budget to the most fixed constraint. Predictably, the project manager then becomes hypersensitive to schedule because inflationary cost increases due to delays may jeopardize the project. The result is that scope becomes the most flexible constraint. This represents a seismic shift in how projects are designed and the priorities by which tradeoffs are decided, all of which have enduring implications in an asset’s life cycle cost and performance.
New Metrics: Expanding Success Criteria
Transportation projects strive to be “on-time” and “on-budget.” But those metrics are only the beginning amidst the roaring expansion of success criteria and associated constraints.
Federal, state and local regulations are swelling. Landowner and business rights are evolving. The scope and nature of environmental considerations and compliance is ever increasing. As the threatened and endangered species list grows, so do construction time-of-year restrictions. Stakeholder and special interest groups’ expectations and involvement are skyrocketing. Multi-modal accommodations are multiplying. Construction restrictions are rising from uncommon directions. Social and community considerations, such as environmental justice, inclusion and equity, are gaining momentum with far-reaching aspirations. While well-intentioned, accommodating this dynamic and growing list of success criteria on an active project can quickly strain and jeopardize any reasonable budget, scope and schedule.
The New Project Manager
The compounding effects of these and other trends converge on the project manager’s desk. So, what is the value of a great PM? While difficult to quantify, experts agree it is significant and greater than you might think.
When reviewing a stack of consultant design proposals, most experienced reviewers instinctively first turn to the org chart and assess the PM. Current realities are driving DOTs to recognize the value of project managers, who need to:
- expedite project delivery,
- juggle evolving success criteria and rotating stakeholders,
- sustain and strengthen the team,
- constructively navigate conflict in ways that strengthen relationships for future projects,
- respect the triple constraint and practice appropriate change management,
- build public trust and strengthen their DOT’s credibility,
- make good decisions that benefit the construction asset, agency and public during construction, operation and maintenance of the assets,
- and in so many other ways.
Forward-leaning DOTs recognize the difference and results between an inexperienced, average, good and great project manager are so vast that they are strategically focusing on this important role. There is perhaps no greater ROI for a DOT than a great project manager.
The New PM Training is Holistic
For DOTs to continue to meet their project, program and portfolio objectives, they must aggressively embrace and support the maturing discipline of transportation project management. This requires a commitment to professional development that leverages university education, continuing technical and soft-skill professional training, hands-on experience and certifications.
With 30 years of executive leadership in transportation projects, programs and portfolios, I understand the remarkable results this investment can produce. Developing award-winning projects, overseeing the Virginia Department of Transportation’s project development portfolio that represents $47 billion of work, and working with DOTs across the nation have given me unique experiences and perspectives on how to increase productivity and efficiencies in this space, many of which are captured in my book, Transportation Project Management (Wiley 2023).
Now, as a professor of practice at the University of Virginia’s School of Engineering and Applied Science, I’m committed to shaping and advancing the emerging field of project management, both as a researcher and as a training instructor for engineers and stakeholders in the field.
My goal is to help create a resilient and nimble workforce, connecting communities to economic opportunities, essential services and sustainable infrastructure.
Rob is the author of the industry reference and guide, Transportation Project Management (Wiley, 2023). He has served in many industry roles, most notably as chair of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) Technical Committee on Project Management, member of AASHTO’s Committee on Design, and AASHTO’s Executive Committee on Design. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Civil Engineering from the University of Illinois in Urbana-Champaign, and he is a licensed Professional Engineer (PE) and a certified Project Management Professional (PMP).