Good afternoon, my name is Dean and I will be your conference operator today. At this time, I would like to welcome everyone to the Organizational Management, Part B. All lines are on mute to prevent any background noise. Afterward there will be a question and answer session. If you would like to ask a question during this time, simply press *1 on your telephone keypad. If you want to withdraw your question, press #. Miss Jessica Capuano, you may begin your conference. Hello and welcome to a special Talking Operations. This is the third and final part, just in time for the holidays. Today's webinar is focused on organizational management for traffic signal systems part B. I will be giving a brief introduction to the web conferencing environment before turning it over. Please be advised that the seminar is being recorded. The format of this webinar is different than previous webinars. Instead of a several part presentation, we will have one instructor who are will introduce shortly. It will also be more interactive. It will be several audience polls during the webinar. And the instructor will pause to take questions. It will last approximately 60 minutes. During the webinar, if you think about a question, you can type it into the chat area on the left side of your screen. Please make sure that you send your screen to everyone rather than just a presenter. The instructor will stop at certain points during the webinar to address questions. The file containing the audio and visual portion will be posted on the website within the next week. And attendees will be notified of the presentation and the recording and the first captioning of the seminar. We encourage those who were not able to attend to access it online. Presentation use today is available in the file download box. To download the file, click on the name of the file and click on the button at the bottom of the download button. At this time, I would like to choose our instructor for today's webinar Mr. Lawrence Marcus with over 25 years of extreme traffic engineering, planning and operation. Yes extensive if -- extensive experience. Mr. market has been an interim professor at George Washington University for 15 years and is currently the vice mayor of the ETT transportation planning Council. He oversaw traffic signal operations in Maryland and is now the assistant vice president at HMP. Larry, feel free to start when you are ready. Thank you. As we move forward, this is the third of three discussions on organizational management. Just to see who is on the line and who attended the first two, if you could quickly poll in, if you attended the first one a week ago? N Talk 01. -- NTOC 01. It looks like about half and half. I will keep that in mind as they go forward. You can see on the screen for module one, the learning outcomes. We look at defining your organization's purpose. We looked at understanding its culture. And then with that in mind, your relationship with internal and external stakeholders. And finally, given all of that, if you do have mission statements for the values and goals, and all of the above integrated within. In session II which was held on Tuesday, we reviewed the following which is shown on the screen. If you could, if you could also poll in whether you participate in that module, 2A which discussed the structure of your organization and journal down into that. A lot about communication, internal and external. Recognizing whether you're organizational structure meets the goals and objectives that hopefully you have established. And that being the route the series is putting the pieces together so you can effectively manage your program and it is flexible to reflect performance. Which we will be discussing today. Your stakeholders. And change over time. So it looks like a vast majority be did attend 2A and chimed in for. -- for 2A. Great. This session, we will be going through taking the discussion for the first time which is pretty straightforward, for those of you who missed it, on mission, values and objectives, and looking at specifically the evaluation criteria. And then, overall strategies to help you be successful. As an organization. And how they link back to your goals and objectives. All right. One thing that I showed less time, as an example which from the New York City DOT website which represents the Mayor's plan for the city. And there so that for DOT. A strategic plan. As you can see below, citywide accountability programs. Understanding the values of the Mayor and his initiative and bringing it to DOT and pushing the accountability process. Also on the website, you can see the link to a progress report and somewhat of marketing, if you will, which is one of the things that I'm encouraging to do. The major accomplishments that are shown. You can see the detailed list. Again, Bjork city being an extreme example of where they have much more resources than many of you on the line. But a good example. Kind of first things first before we get into specifics of the right area. I wanted to be sure we were all on the same page on the relationships between gold, objectives and performance measures. As we jump into performance measures, I guess my soapbox, if you will, is ensuring that you have the structure in place. Goals, linked to objectives. Link to performance measures. So you have that structure. I seen too often, I guess, in the working world. For projects. Of initiatives. And the examples. And the soft relationship. And the concern is that there isn't a balance or linkage between the two. To make sure you are achieving the goals. Make sure that the performance measures, as they are scored, that it reflects directly back to these goals and balanced appropriately between the goals. And as we go to the next slide, it is pretty straightforward. But make sure we are thinking the same thing. You can see in example goal of mobility. A link objective. Minimizing congestion where possible. And typical of performance measures for such a goal, such an objective. And that you have the structure in place. Again, pretty straightforward. I think that is the world that we normally jump into. As technicians. But one of the main purposes of this session and the others have been to hopefully help you if your perspective is that this broad, to bring in these other areas. Your system performance which we were discussing earlier. Versus the use of your resources. And the organization--- and the organization's perspective. If you could, the next polling question is, does your organization have this criteria established are ready ? As far as the criteria for performance? Is it only the first one? System performance? Or is it number two or number three? All right. As you can see, the polling results, the "somewhat" are the majority in that is why we are here. To help drill down a bit into those other two. While not neglecting the third. To help you be successful from all three perspectives. You can see, too, that "yes it does" is only 12%. Two people in this particular case. I will do what I can to help with this balancing. All right. Moving to the first system performance, this is a list of examples for system objectives. We are not to the evaluation criteria yet. At the link between broadly described goals in mobility and accessibility and safety and protecting the environment, that level goal description, to the objective, in this case, for mobility, you can see here, just getting to minimizing the travel time and improving the system reliability and increasing this and improving it. Those types of terms. To get you specifically into an area. But it doesn't quantify it. That is the link that is necessary. Now, jumping into specifics of performance measures, you can see two areas of general goals. One being mobility and the other one being safety. Kind of quickly, we will walk through the mobility site. I think everyone is familiar with it. And then we will see what you have for safety. Well, and most important make, performance measures are quantifiable. As opposed to a goal, as opposed to a -- an objective. You can measure this. From delayed intersection to travel time. Through or within the quarter, for example. And improving mobility. I want to throw that in. That you have other mobility objectives that were more than just traffic, depending on the values of your organization. Safety, I listed that too. If you could chime in with some examples in the chat box of examples that you have used for safety objectives. Not measures -- actually, let's jump into specific safety measures. And look through your list as we move forward. I will tell you, things that would support this on the mobility side, anyway, would be things like reviewing your coordinations timing. At least every three years. Whether you are meeting that or not. Broadening your perspective on your performance measures. Not only to your peak period but off the planning and holidays. The Lester -- Illustratively. Do we have any safety performance measures out there other than when I put up on screen? Hello, so you are aware, you can type that into the chat box which is located on the left-hand side of your screen. Thank you. All right. I pulled up an example that reflects values more than mainstream traffic operations. When I worked with the city of Rockville to, that they used, you can see here on the slide. First being from a traffic calming perspective. The actual production due to the traffic home in device or set of devices. Something based on the establishment for the transportation a mission statement in understanding the values, goals and objectives. And we did not have good performance measures are pedestrian safety at intersections. Based on the need to be able to quantify the. I guess that is a topic for another webinar. Or off-line discussion. That is what is reflected here. The average safety as well as percent of signal for intersections that were in a specific category. As you can see as a side note, excellent, good. And poor. We actually have "adequate" tied to the ordinance on the development review site. As we get reviews from developers, they need to hit traffic metrics but also pedestrian safety metrics at intersections. Which helped us get back to the city goals, and objectives, based on this performance. And you can see, if you could scroll through, as I go through the chat box, you can see people's participants comments within performance measures. Yes, I agree with those two. And the top 10 or new -- top 10 worst intersections. As they -- as a CIP priority. That may comes. That makes -- that make sense.. As we move into issuing and me sure your resources are in the right place, I have listed a few here. They seem pretty straight forward. As far as first things first. For the peak period and after -- traffic management. That you are focusing on and ensuring that motorists have up to date information . If your jurisdiction is mature enough to have such resources. Special pedestrian needs. And activity centers such as school zones and activity centers and major transit hubs -- and you can read the list for yourself. Just going through certainly within the safety areas. Unplanned events versus planned events. Normally used planned events as an example later on as we summarize what we have discussed today. Anything I am missing, go ahead and feel free to chat it in four areas where you want your staff to focus in. Kind of answering the mail on traffic management but also information, pedestrian safety, planned and unplanned events. Pilferage to put one or two more in -- feel free to put one or two more in. Very good. School zones. Absolutely. Safe route to school. Absolutely. Good. As those come in, I will keep moving forward. Here are some examples for ways to measure the performance of your staff and department. Illustrative of the city of rock Hill. -- Rockfield, for your convenience. Without reading them all, percent of complaints and concerns reviewed and responded to within a timeframe. And mentor to see how responsive you are to stakeholders and constituents. Numbers of CIP projects manage per full-time employees. Just to get a feel for your workload and productivity. I would say that one is a bit -- it is okay at the macro level. But as many of you know, A CIP project varies in size. You can have a person managing one big project but it is only one project. It needs to be footnoted, I guess. You can read through the other metrics whether it is the amount of ever structure that you are maintaining or the amount of work per person or per your department as metrics. For your convenience. Certainly, one thing to note, as you were checking these kinds of things for your departments, the numbers himself have value. But the trend have even more value. In some cases. As your staff, as their financial pressures are on your group and you are asked to do more. You could show those trends over time of what your staff is working on with the workload and the pressures that you are put under. As well as successes for you have essentially benchmark the point in time. And pivoting from that point in time, are you getting better? At meeting your goals and objectives? Through these performance measures ask up that trendline is important for you to Mark. -- to mark. Finally, we touched on this a bit but the evaluation criteria, to measure the organization as a whole, you are department's success. And if the get specifically to how you manage the scope and schedule and budget a projects you are working on. I guess it is used to discuss and describe the CNP project because you can put a border around it. As opposed to the type of reactive edition or operational conditions that you have taking up so much of your time and effort. It is more difficult to quantify the ongoing effort. Here is a list, I will you read through this and I will pull out a few of them, the metrics. Pretty straight forward. In the city I worked with in the past. It did a very good job and checking such items throughout the city. Percent of CIP projects. Contracts that were completed on schedule that were completed on or under budget. Cost overruns trekking. The timeframe associated with completing projects. Again, it may not be a one-size-fits-all. You have to be cognizant of that. And a reflection of survey questions, percentage of citizens of rating the conditions of the sidewalk as good or excellent. Illustrative of it or structure in general. Looking at some of the efficiency measures, you can read through those. This is just inefficiency. In this case, of inspectors and the work they are doing. And, finally, we touched on this a bit, workload measures. I will let you read through those. Trying to expand a bit from all of the traffic examples that we have used. Although I understand that is the audience. I will let you work and read through that for a few seconds and then I will move forward. All right, we have close out at least the first part of the discussion on evaluation criteria and getting more and you strategies to improve the operations of the organization -- into the strategies to improve the operations of the organization. We are on the same page. We want to make sure of that. The customer and stakeholder perceptions are very important. We talked a lot in the first two sessions about reaching out proactively. And as shown in the metrics, we actively responding to complaints. But a polling question for the group is how many of you actually survey, I guess if you are a city or county jurisdiction, survey the customer perception of how you are doing? It is based on a bright he of metrics -- variety of metrics. We have two questions on that. The first one is does your organization measure or check the time elapsed to respond to citizens? The timeframe? The second one is due you have that customer survey on perception?'s Looking to the results, only 25% to track elapsed times -- to respond to citizens. I guess, at all levels of government, it is important to do so in order to understand, it is also a sensitive issue. However, I think from the standards that you are pushing to the high bar, that you are establishing for your staff, I think it is important to set such standards. And it sure that your group is being responsive. When those random complaints come in to those above you as far as how responsive you are, you are able to track this to show your responsive this. Certainly, internally, you want to get it done. That also extremely, more often than not, you have criticism, more so than praise, you have something to fall back on and say here's the criteria and it has been accepted by the internal stakeholders. And this is how we are achieving it in here is the trend of action getting better over time. This comment that we are not responsive, it does or does not hold water. You actually have that tracking system. And only 15% actually have an organizational customer survey. And I found that to be very enlightening as well. And we have talked about that in the past, about reaching out to stakeholders. I think it is critical in our jobs to get the word out as to what we are doing. It is also important to understand their perception of how we are doing. And how to achieve both on the proactive side of getting the word out but this is a good reflection of how well our messaging is being received and how understandable it is. I think you need the example as to where we could think we are doing a good job, if it is from a state perspective and we are working on a larger scale project, we have the variable message signs to get the word out to say that there will be a lane closure from mile marker 62 mile marker 10. From our perspective, it may make sense. But if you are in an environment such as what I have been in the past were you able to get feedback and learn, the type of comments to help us get better at such things such as yes, you got the word out but I have no idea where mile marker six is. I know where "x" exit is. But I don't know the mile markers. And help us do our job better. The intent of getting the word out is to minimize the pain. If it is in a construction environment or just optimizing traffic flow in general. So I can provide, if you're interested, my e-mail address is at the end. I can provide more information on surveying to help you. If you are a standalone DOT, it is pretty easy to implement. If you are part of a bigger organization, it would probably need to be done organizational he wide -- organizationally wide. It is surprising how low that number is. All right come a closing that out and getting specific, more specific strategies. To be successful in meeting your goals and objectives, based on your values and mission statement. I want to jump quickly into three areas. The first being developing leadership school -- skills of your staff. Setting management expectations. As you might expect, which is linking it back to measures. Acted these goals. And what target are you setting as a performance measure to define your success. Does that make sense? You have your general goals which you can link to your objectives. And then you have the performance measure which may say you are 5/10. Is that 5/10, success? What measure success. If not, one-size-fits-all. Traffic congestion in an urban area, the level of service target is much lower. Then it is in a rural area. I won't say suburban because in some cases, it is worse, right? But it went to jump into these areas. Starting with developing leadership. In the past sessions, we have discussed best practices and program and project management. And empowering your front-line staff to be successful and take him more responsibility. -- take on more responsibility. That is what the first one refers to. For project tracking and project management. Always, in our field, encouraging innovation. I don't know about you but that one statement that always rubs me the wrong way is when asked about why something was done this way, and they say that is how we've always done it. That doesn't sit well. It easily when there are new opportunities. Bullet one above as far as project management. It also ever-changing technology that we have in our field. With all of that said, hopefully you are developing and mentoring environment. That is a passion of mine. The private we should feel as managers in seeing our front-line staff develop into managers. Developing into leadership roles within your organization. And providing that. All consistent with the next bullet of empowering your front-line staff to be successful. Giving them the tools for accountability and responsibility. Understanding the organization in stakeholder value. They can sure that that is being conveyed in all of the actions that you take. Orienting all of this performance back to your goals, objectives and measuring it. For your performance, actively communicating. I think I have covered that. And seeking the 360 feedback. That is what we were discussing earlier with the survey. Internal and external feedback. You can look at the 360 from the external, as mentioned from the customer survey. But also internally, with other departments. With your supervisors etc. With your supervisors etc. I just want to do a better job environment. Getting there, setting management expectations, we have covered most of these. There is a lot more depth that we can get into on each of these topics, obviously. One hour to cover a whole course of information certainly isn't enough. But hopefully enough to be dangerous, if you will. Starting with creating a transparent process. Easier communication. Productivity. And when you can market it, as discussed later. Establishing clear roles and responsibilities. That is certainly internal to your own group. How you work with others in your government agency. And then, conveying that outside of your group to external stakeholders. And certainly, if you are a large or small organization, we have different ownership, maintenance, operations of your signal system. That is clear. I'm sure it is contracted. Formalizing your project controls which is what we discussed at link the last time. -- length last time. This could apply to the balance at the intersections. Or tort -- or toward what the MCD direct you to do. In the environment that you are working in. Versus the values that your jurisdiction holds. Which is certainly not saying to vary from it, that is not the message your. Setting clear expectations internally. Within your staff. To mentor them. Balancing your workload fairly which gets back to the last session of resource allocation for resource management and using tools that are available to you to understand the workload balance. Which can work well if you have a team of people with similar skill sets. But it is much more challenging if you have specialists. Which you know. If you have a team of many specialists, it is more difficult to balance the workload based on those areas of expertise. And then, as we are in a public environment, to manage the funds very carefully and transparently, as far as what you are using those resources for. Always looking for the long-term gain, if you will. And then defining success. Setting expectations for your quality. Setting are targets for performance. And tracking performance versus targets. And again example would be, as you have formants metrics, it is one thing to measure things. It is another to set the bar of where you want to be. That really falls into all three categories discussed before. As far as system performance. As far as what you what your staff to a complex. And your -- to accomplish. And your team as a whole. Raise that bar. Get to a place of acceptability. And raise the bar. That is normally just appreciated by everyone. You bring everyone up in their application of technology, of delivery, and educate people and projects. Everyone grows together, if you will. I put together an example exercise just to kind of bring these pieces together. Just to hopefully -- it is an example everyone is firmly with and we can look at each of these bullets and the tools that are available to be successful. As you were working on a planned, large-scale, short timeframe traffic event am a it can be anything from construction of a facility or large-scale closures or small clear at -- skill closures. Bill in the blank. Depending on your jurisdiction. I saw everything from large-scale D.O. to. To Virginia Tech hokey out there. At Lane Stadium some of those few Sundays a year where you have this football event, are you pretty much -- it can apply to all of these. Look through the list and hopefully it applies generically across the board. As we mentioned, communication is internally and external and needs to start at a proactive stage as to what is coming and what your messages. -- message is. And how high or low you set the bar. My experiences you set the bar low from a traffic perspective of what people should expect. Not in your abilities but in the impact. Rather, the feedback that we have received and the public is they want to make choices. If it ends up being a 30 minute delay, they are upset. If it is a 30 minute delay and they end up being in a five or 10 minute delay, they are not such a bad place because they expected worse. That is my advice. To get to that point, you certainly need to forecast your traffic conditions. As to what the event will incurred. Whether it is a closure in the diversion route. Communicating, as we discussed, with an example in the last session about the diversion route. If you talk to the other jurisdictions that it may impact? As well as stakeholders in general who are impacted by the traffic diversion? Other modes that may have to support this? Is simply your timing. To ensure that you have optimized the system based on those conditions. Once the event is underway, do you have field can medications in place? Internally? Working with your staff and the public to get the message out? As you are monitoring the traffic conditions, are you able to tweak your plan in an environment where all involved can make those the judge -- adjustments? And, once it is complete, frankly, one of the better -- i a bad link the talks with professionals in this area. There different ways to measure performance. That when it is something like this, or large-scale short-term, as our example is, how many complaints did you receive at the end of the day? As far as implement it what you need to implement? Or having that specialist event? Aced on the feedback of your stakeholders, before, during and after, what are your lessons learned so you can do your job better? Finally, once it is over, market your success and how well it went. The perception of your group is here is the level of effort that you plan for. Here is the technology that used. Here is how we monitored it. Here is what happened. And here's what we didn't expect. Here is how we adjusted. Here is what we think it was a successful event. That is short reputation. Chatting and, anything I missed on that particular example? Certainly trying to pull together the different things we have been talking about. You have metrics associated with each of those. You have surveying. You have the communication out let's. Anything I missed? Feel free to chat in now otherwise I will move onto some of the summary slides. All right. Just summarizing which will take 45 minutes, summarizing the type of things we have been covering, -- 4 to 5 minutes, summarizing the types of things we have been covering, I think what I've heard at the annual -- IT annual conference as well as chatting, we have the traffic site. We are in a good place. We are learning. There are good examples. Generally, we are improving on how we are doing as an organization or our perception as an organization. Here is the toolbox list for you. As you move forward. In shaping your program to be successful. The first thing is managing your work, your staff and the project controls so that the resource side as well as the project controls I, the trekking scope budget, the performance management that we just went through as far as quantifying and help you all you are doing. That was discussed. And continuing to raise the bar. And celebrating when you hit those targets. Internally and marketing that. That you have done such. Technical best practices. Which is again very relevant in our field as to new best practices, new technologies,