Oversight & Stewardship: White Paper
Federal Highway Administration Stewardship of National
Highway Programs
Each year our nation entrusts us … the Federal Highway Administration
… with more than $30 Billion of its vital public resources to
address its highway transportation needs. Our nation expects us to
be conscientious stewards of those resources. Stewardship is a challenging
core mission-related responsibility. In large part, it helps to define
our roles, functions and the relationships with whom we work. Not
only does an understanding of our stewardship responsibilities help
us to define how we go about our nation's highway business but it
is also clearly defines the unique and indispensable contribution
that only we can add to the transportation effort. It is our reason
for existence.
What Is It … What Does It Require?
Federal stewardship embodies our responsibility to ensure that the
resources entrusted to us are efficiently used to best meet our nation's
highway needs. It reflects our responsibility for the development
and delivery of the Federal Highway programs. It requires our leadership
in moving our nation's transportation systems toward outcomes that
reflect the nation's interests and the necessary requirements both
to support our economy and to support our freedom to move. Stewardship
requires that we continue to find ways to meet our highway responsibilities
to the public by efficiently delivering the very best in safe, secure,
operationally efficient and technically advanced highway facilities,
while in complete compliance with the spirit and intent of our environmental
responsibilities. It involves all FHWA activities in delivering the
Federal Highway programs, such as leadership, technology deployment,
technical assistance, problem solving, program administration and
oversight. It requires unquestioned corporate and individual integrity.
What Is Our Objective?
Simply stated, our stewardship's desired outcome is an effective
and efficiently managed highway component within the nation's integrated
transportation system. It should result in a successful highway
program delivery team ... that includes all public and private
sector team members … with quality products and services,
a constant eye toward improvement and delivered in full compliance
with all federal laws, policies and regulations. Our goal must be
for all related public agencies to achieve success both in our federal
eyes and in the eyes of the public.
When one attempts to define success it is logical to quickly focus
on the basic objectives of a good "construction" project
(quality work, safe working environment, on schedule and within budget)
since the construction project is the most visible product of the
program. While the construction objectives remain critical there is
much more that is required of the team in order to meet "success"
in the broader sense. The team must, in fact, wisely solve transportation
problems. The team must comply with the appropriate laws and regulations.
The team must understand and meet public expectations. Promises must
be achievable and promises must be kept. The team must win …
and own … the public trust and confidence. The public must be
convinced, by results, that the team can efficiently and effectively
identify what must be done, plan and then execute solutions to their
transportation problems. In summary, the public must be accurately
convinced that a dollar given to the "transportation team"
is a dollar not only wisely invested but also "best" invested.
Federal Aid Highway Program Stewardship
What Is Our Role?
Our role has changed over the years. Our role is not to manage the
work for which states are responsible. Our role is not to direct or
establish priorities that need to be made at the state or local level.
Our role is not to direct how state / local resources are to be spent.
Our role is to provide an independent and a national
perspective. Our role is to articulate, interpret and ensure that
the program fully complies with federal law, regulations and policy
while assisting the states in successfully engaging necessary federal
interagency coordination. Our role is to ensure that the team is postured
for success through independently identifying and reviewing
key planning and estimating assumptions, assessing processes, and
ensuring that all of the appropriate management "bases"
are covered. Similarly, our role is to keep an independent
"finger on the life-cycle pulse" of program / project activity
in order to assure that: systems are working as they should; reporting
is accurate, timely and appropriate; quality is being provided and
indicators of potential problems are identified in time for the team
to take appropriate corrective action. Our role is to enhance communications,
to train and to share lessons learned and best practices based upon
our national level set of experiences and exposures. In sum, our role
is to provide leadership even though we may not have the requisite
authority to "direct" the activity of organizations external
to our agency.
What Does It Entail?
Stewardship requires our attention throughout the process: the program
development phase; the project (program delivery) phase; and also
the asset operational phase. (These phases should not be managed as
separate, isolated activities, but as a "continuum".) The
degree of our attention is based upon a balance of both the needs
and the desires of the state transportation agency.
Program Development Phase: In order for the state and local
transportation agencies to effectively and successfully address the
full breadth of highway requirements their program management must
be solid. It is during this phase that issue solutions are identified,
prioritized and "programmed". More importantly, this is
the stage where commitments and expectations are initially established.
The credibility of the team will ultimately be measured against its
ability to deliver the "program" within the parameters that
are defined at this stage. (The products of the program development
phase are the long-range plan, the STIP … and the supporting
local TIPs.)
Project (Program Delivery) Phase: Projects are outputs of
the program. In fact, they represent a means through which the program
objectives … and promises … are delivered. Projects always
provide tangible products and they require time and resources. Budget
and schedule accomplishments provide "early" but vital measurements
against expectations and are key to project success. Projects are
ultimately "graded" on their delivered "quality"
that includes their safety / security characteristics, engineered
operational efficiency, long term durability, financial value and
how they meet our environmental stewardship responsibilities. These
projects range in size from the small and routine to the very large
and difficult that can cost hundreds of millions of dollars and, by
their very size, can significantly affect the successful delivery
of the state's entire program. Additionally, the largest of these
projects can attract so much interest on their own that their individual
success or failure can spell success or failure for an entire program
… both at the state and at the federal level. The project delivery
team must perform well on all projects but, of course, the greatest
risk exposure usually resides with the very large.
Operational Phase: Once a project is delivered it joins the
highway system assets that must be managed by the state or local agencies.
It must be operated at the peak level of efficiency intended by the
designers … and often beyond that level. Its serviceable lifetime
… and hence the maximum value of its return on investment …
will depend upon the combination of effective design, quality construction,
operational efficiencies, quality of maintenance, and its ability
to continue to meet the required environmental outcomes, safety, security,
volume, technological and other changing traffic demands. The best
and most efficient use of the limited highway resources will be best
served by considering all costs throughout the entire serviceable
life of the asset.
Stewardship Requirements: To be effective our stewardship
responsibilities need to begin with the program development when general
expectations are first established. The basis for overall program
and project success is often established during this phase. Our experience
could be key to identifying the unique challenges facing the state
in the delivery of their program. We need to have our Federal Highway
staff equipped with the necessary tools and skills poised to influence
and to support at the right time and throughout the project continuum.
Our stewardship responsibility requires a broad array of talent and
skills. Effective stewardship requires our safety, security, operations,
planning and environmental skills to help identify good transportation
solutions and to plot an efficient "roadmap" to get there;
our ROW skills to assist the team in getting the time and space to
implement the solutions; and procurement skills to provide innovative
approaches to acquiring necessary products and services. Stewardship
requires our project management skills to provide assurances that
in-place management controls and policies are adequate both to lead
the project phase to success and to keep the public adequately apprised
throughout. It requires our engineering skills to provide assurances
that the quality and technical aspects of the project are being appropriately
delivered; it requires our financial skills both to offer assistance
in crafting what can be a complicated finance support package …
using the innovative financing tools that are available … and
to provide the assurances that resources are being effectively and
accurately tracked. Stewardship requires our operations skills to
ensure that the state has access to what it takes to operate and maintain
the system at peak performance. Finally, it requires that we be able
to keep track of emerging research, technology, best practices, experiences
and lessons learned from throughout the entire community and have
them shared and integrated where appropriate.
How Do We Organize Ourselves?
Even though our role requires that we maintain our independent perspective,
to be effective we must be organized and situated so that effective
communications exist with the state transportation agencies and their
CEOs. (Clearly, we must not only be credible in our specific skill
sets but we must also have access to the key decision makers and decision-making
processes so that our experiences and perspectives are given the appropriate
consideration. We must establish mutual trust and confidence and be
able to define "success" in synchronization with the state
transportation agency.) It's clear that our four key FHWA business
processes of National Policy Leadership, Program Delivery, Technical
Assistance and Technology Deployment represent the means through which
we deliver stewardship to the nation. We must ensure that these business
processes incorporate the best management practices. We must ensure
that we have identified, captured and trained the right mix of skills
and talent on our staff to carry out our stewardship role.
And finally, as leaders, we must recognize resource limitations where
they exist then prioritize and focus our stewardship attention based
upon a well though-out risk assessment of the state's program and
capabilities. As leaders it is up to us to organize our team for successful
stewardship.
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the SP&R Field Handbook Table of Contents
