I grew up in a transportation engineering environment geared toward the following process: Design, build, construct, maintain. Repeat. In today's world, every step of that process must be accomplished with an eye toward the operations of our system if we are to succeed in providing solutions for the evolving transportation landscape. 

Today in Utah, we face some significant challengesthat absolutely demand an increased focus on operations. While every state is unique, we experience our own version of issues that will be familiar to almost every state.

• Demands on the system outpace available funding. In Utah, our population is predicted to double by 2050. The demands on our transportation system will far outpace our ability to build new capacity.

• Economic growth depends on successful transportation. Freight vehicles represent a quarter of vehicle traffic on Utah's freeways. While this is quite a bit higher than the national average, it is indicative of the need for reliable travel time and safe roads to support economic vitality and new business growth nationwide.

• Desire for integrated multimodal transportation systems is growing into an expectation. The rising generation of Millennials embodies a broader, growing appetite for better intermodal integration, active transportation options and less reliance on personal vehicles.

If we are going to be successful in addressing these challenges and others, owners of the transportation system can't continue to do things the way we always have.

I have a button pin that says "But that's the way it's always been done" with a big red circle and bar through it, the kind of circle you see on "No Smoking" signs. It is something I started carrying around with me years ago, long before I became Executive Director at the Utah Department of Transportation.

Even then, UDOT had a goal to innovate and to be willing to take risks with our valued partners in private industry. My predecessor, John Njord, had set forth a challenge before the Olympics came to Salt Lake City. It was simple, and it was big. He shared a vision with our entire organization and all our partners in industry: create a world-class traffic system.

With that goal in mind, we rallied together to solve short-term and long-term issues. The things we accomplished as a result have been some of our most defining achievements. We built the biggest project in Utah's history to reconstruct Interstate 15 in Salt Lake City, and we did it using design-build delivery for the first time ever. We began to use communications as a tool for travel demand management. We built our Traffic Operations Center, where we began integrating our traffic signal operations. Today more than 80 percent of the signals in the state, including those owned by local governments, are on a single system operating out of that Center.

A few key elements here stand out to me as we face new challenges, and we shift our paradigm to become operationally-focused owners of our country's transportation system as we look for solutions.

1. Provide clear vision. Njord unified the transportation industry around a goal that was big enough to be exciting and clear enough to be relatable. Today at UDOT, we have a Vision of Keeping Utah Moving and a Mission statement that we are "Innovating transportation solutions to strengthen Utah's economy and enhance quality of life." Our own staff, our partners in the public and private sectors, and our legislators are very familiar with these guiding principles. Our strategic goals are arguably even more well-known: Zero Fatalities; Preserve Infrastructure; and Optimize Mobility.

I would guess that your own organization has either explicit or implicit versions of these same ideals. Safety, economic growth, proactive maintenance and of course, mobility. I encourage you to do whatever you can to make your organization's goals as direct and clear as possible. It provides a framework for everyone engaged in the work to understand what they are working toward and to gear their ideas toward achieving common goals. This creates an environment where creativity and innovation can thrive.

2. Develop performance measures.

Trust is the single most important factor in encouraging creativity and innovation. Trust is much easier when we as owners stop telling our employees how to do things and instead lay out clear expectations of what is expected. As I mentioned, clear goals are the first step in defining expectations. Good performance measures are the next step.  Performance measures ensure that all have an objective way to measure success and value. This is beneficial in many situations where trust is necessary. Among owners and private partners, internal leadership and staff, elected officials and transportation agencies.

Successful performance management serves as an objective, stabilizing force as we balance public needs and budgetary limitations to achieve optimal results with taxpayer dollars.  Technical data and the principles of performance management provide an objective foundation for decision-making and also help owners communicate the value of operational improvements.

Operations-related costs, both for hard infrastructure and the time required for management, are relatively new territory both for owners and the elected officials who allocate our funding. One of the most important efforts our traffic operations group has been involved with in recent years was a collaboration with Purdue University and the Indiana Department of Transportation.

We developed a set of performance metrics that helped us improve traffic signal timing in a much faster and more effective way, while also providing data demonstrating the exact magnitude and nature of those improvements. Efforts to identify and develop operations-related performance measures must continue here at UDOT and on a national level.

3. It's not about the next big thing--it's the next thousand little things. I think about the future a great deal, and I have the privilege of being surrounded by very bright employees who share my love of innovation, technology and the possibilities for tomorrow. Enormous technological advancements in operations and transportation in general are upon us, and it's an exhilarating time to be part of our industry. Autonomous vehicles will be on our roads within ten years—probably sooner. Technology such as 3D printing is being employed for the construction of bridges. Things that would have seemed impossible to me on my first day at UDOT are happening today.

As eager as I am to be part of innovation and to advance it, I also recognize the significance of innovations that aren't as seemingly glamorous. Partnerships with private industry, such as Waze, to distribute our real-time data more widely better equips travelers with traffic information and can help with travel demand management. Improved data collection and management systems are foundational to performance metrics and incremental—but valuable—advancements in coordinated signal timing, ramp metering and traffic flow.

Every day, we can look for areas of need, and we can find small tools and techniques to do things better, faster and smarter. This is the essence of innovation, and even the smallest operational innovations can improve the overall system in dramatic ways. Sometimes the most important concepts are the simplest.

The keys to becoming a innovative organization is for leadership to set a vision (the what) and then challenge your talented teams to determine how to accomplish that vision. Focus on outcomes, and measure them. But by far and away, the most important thing is to develop a culture of trust. People will not be willing to try something new and innovative if they don’t believe leadership has their back. An organization that is more concerned with “not making a mistake” will never be a pioneering, stimulating place where talented people love to work.

You must want to succeed more than you are afraid to fail.

My old button pin has become a little piece of UDOT lore. I confess I'm not sure exactly where it is today. But I do know that in meetings, staff will reference that pin when they share an idea that will dramatically depart from the status quo. The idea the pin symbolizes is essential. Everyone at UDOT knows they are trusted by leadership to take educated risks--to consider every possibility--in achieving our goals. And we all agree on the sometimes unsettling but always exciting fact that the status quo isn't going to get us there.