From the Managing Director

By Tom Kern

As the June Workforce Development Summit organized by NOCoE nears, our research and planning has helped set the context for what we hope is a meaningful dialogue among participants to establish a strategic direction for the TSM&O community to address its workforce needs.

The first of three white papers prepared for the Summit notes:

Over the last several years, research conducted by the National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) and the Transportation Research Board’s Strategic Highway Research Program (SHRP2) program -- together with a set of state DOT “Capability Maturity” workshops and forums sponsored by FHWA and the National Operations Center of Excellence (NOCoE) --have developed an understanding of the challenges facing the evolution of more effective TSM&O.  In more than 50 state workshops and 7 Regional Operations Forums, key state DOT TSM&O managers and staff (and often their Public Safety Agency and Metropolitan Planning Organization partners) evaluated their state’s or region’s current capabilities in several dimensions related to business and technical processes and institutional readiness – including organization and staffing.  This evaluation has established a clear picture of the state-of-the practice within state DOTs and partner agencies regarding capabilities for continuous improvement of effective TSM&O.

A key issue has been the dependence of continuous improvement on developing the necessary workforce capabilities – both technical and managerial – both in the public and private sectors. The self-evaluations (level 2 on a 4-level scale from “Start-up” to “Managed”) indicate that while agencies have recognized the challenges associated with staff levels and workforce development, they have just begun to focus on key steps to improve workforce capability -- including identifying core capacities needed, development of position descriptions, and new approaches to recruitment and retention. 

In the next issue of the newsletter, I will touch on some of the major considerations raised in white papers two and three.  Briefly, those papers are focusing on:

• White Paper No.2 -- Identification of staff/workforce core technical and managerial capacity improvement needs and gaps in capacity development. Previous NCHRP studies have identified key staffing needs – as related to key program functional areas –such as policy and strategic considerations, program planning, systems development, project management and real-time operations and typical staff positions such as an ITS Project Manager, a Traffic Operations Engineer or an ITS Technician.  This paper identifies priority needs and gaps in training and education.
• White Paper No. 3-- Strategies and actions to develop the needed work force. The cross-cutting perspectives represented to be represented at the Summit by state DOTs, local agencies, academia, and the private sector offer a unique opportunity to discuss the priority issues facing the TSM&O community and identify a way forward.

After the Summit, we will update you on its outcomes and next steps, including the use of one or more webinars to broadly engage the TSM&O community.