Government, privatesector, and citizen stakeholders must collaborate to reduce pipeline risks.

On November 1, 2007, a twelve-inch liquid propane line ruptured in Clarke County, Mississippi. Over the next forty-eight hours, eleven thousand barrels of propane were released through a 636-foot-long split in the longitudinal seam. This propane vaporized, and the vapor cloud eventually ignited, causing a fire that resulted in the evacuation of 250 people from their homes and $2.1 million in property damage.

In 2006, the failed pipe was internally inspected within its legal time frame, and the cause of the failure remains unknown. The National Transportation Safety Board, Department of Transportation’s Pipeline and Hazardous Materials Safety Administration (PHMSA), and pipeline company continue to investigate. Clarke County, state, and federal officials want to know how this tragedy could have been prevented.

Pipelines are reportedly the safest means available to transport energy materials such as natural gas and petroleum that the United States critically needs. Transport by pipeline is safeguarded through many layers of protection designed to prevent and mitigate the consequences of pipeline incidents.

In rare occurrences, the layers of protection fail—as they did in Clarke County—having serious consequences. One woman, on oxygen and in poor health, lived in a trailer home less than twenty yards from the pipeline. When gas from the ruptured pipe filled her home and she was unable to be moved quickly enough, she begged her daughter to leave and save her own life. The daughter watched helplessly as the flames engulfed her mother and their home.

Tony Fleming, president of the Clarke County Board of Supervisors, was working in the area that day and was one of the first to respond to the explosion. When the pipe ruptured, he heard a blast, saw a fireball, and several seconds later heard a second blast. As a volunteer fireman, he instinctively started toward the scene before his pager went off. As an emergency responder, he had attended the pipeline operator’s annual safety meetings and was aware of a pipeline in the area. The emergency responders recognized the pipeline markers and knew to call the 800 number listed on them. Fleming helped coordinate the emergency response, consoled residents, and answered questions from reporters.

Improving Pipeline Safety

Since the event, Fleming has gained insights that will help county, city, and state managers improve pipeline safety. Although pipeline operators are required to communicate pipeline safety information to people living along their pipelines, residents may not recognize or retain the information. Fleming is concerned that many people living along the failed pipeline did not know of its existence and did not know how to recognize that a leak had occurred or what to do in such an event. Although emergency responders were aware of the pipeline, the county did not have maps showing the line, its size, or the product transported. Following the accident, Fleming searched tax records and located eleven pipelines in the county—all of which were subsequently added to the county maps.

Fleming witnessed the impact the accident had on the community. He is concerned that a new home has been placed on the site where the previous trailer home burned to the ground. At the time of the accident, the county had no permit requirements for dwellings located along the pipeline right of way and thus no way to prevent a replacement trailer from being installed. Compounding his concern are the calls he receives from residents worried about four new pipeline routes proposed in Clarke County. Most residents oppose the new lines and want to hire lawyers to fight the construction.

However, operators can resort to the use of eminent domain to accomplish pipeline extensions, and property owners are being asked to work with the pipeline companies to find ways to accommodate the energy pipelines in their communities. The county has held hearings to answer community questions about the pipelines, and some suggest the next step should be use of a land development approval process to bring area stakeholders together to reach a compromise.

Crossing Boundaries

Pipeline safety responsibility crosses political and sectoral boundaries: local, regional, and national stakeholders have a shared interest in pipeline safety improvement. Two months after the pipeline rupture in Clarke County, PHMSA asked stakeholders from around the country to join together at the first Pipelines and Informed Planning Alliance (PIPA) meeting to work on a process that could add more protection. Tony Fleming attended.

Residents of Clarke County, like many growing communities across the country, must find a way to address the issue of land use and development near pipelines. Community residents are fortunate that the incident happened after most people had left for work and children were at school. The low population density of the area also limited the extent of the tragedy.

Any citizen can play a role in reducing pipeline risks in the community by getting involved (see box). One way is to participate in the land-use and development processes, in which many questions must be answered. How much risk do pipelines pose to the community or jurisdiction? Should populations that are difficult to evacuate be given special consideration? Where can developers and planners find information about pipelines and their operators? What practices would help them minimize the risks in the event of a pipeline failure? Are there ways to utilize pipeline rights of way to enhance the community? How can new development safely coexist with pipelines? Could a buffer zone or more stringent building codes effectively reduce the hazards to the community? How do jurisdictions work together to mitigate pipeline dangers and educate the public, and how do they cooperate or subordinate in the event of a disaster?

When pipelines cross more densely populated areas or when development comes into proximity to pipelines, the risk of damage to the pipelines increases, as does the risk to populations near the lines. Figure 1 shows an increasingly familiar situation, a formerly rural area near a transmission pipeline in Washington State and the same area after construction of a new residential development.

Reducing Risk

Planners and developers often work under the pressure of conflicting goals: promoting economic viability while improving quality of life, developing infrastructure while ensuring public safety, attracting industry while limiting air and water pollution, and constructing new buildings while managing traffic congestion. They must balance community benefits and growth with individual landowner rights.

They must be aware of potential hazards and avoid them (ideally) or buffer the community from them. Pipelines are usually safe and generally invisible to the community, but they can and do pose risks. Checking pipeline location is the first step in consideration of pipeline risks in the landuse planning process (Figure 2).

As noted, pipeline regulatory protection already has many layers, beginning with established and proven pipeline design, manufacturing, and construction standards. They include regulatory requirements for pipeline operators to rigorously monitor, inspect, maintain, and protect their pipelines. Operators must also develop and maintain management practices to ensure the integrity and safe operation of their pipelines. Personnel working on pipelines must demonstrate they are qualified to perform the work. Operator personnel must demonstrate they can recognize abnormal conditions and respond appropriately to protect life and property.

In densely populated and other high-consequence areas, additional protective measures further ensure pipeline safety. These measures may include extra depth of cover over the pipe, lower allowable operating stress levels, and more stringent monitoring. PHMSA continually evaluates pipeline operator inspection and accident data to determine when operational practices need to be enhanced or other corrective actions taken.

To enhance pipeline safety, pipeline operators are required to develop and implement public awareness campaigns to communicate with people living along the pipeline, emergency responders, and government officials. They are required to provide very specific information to the affected public through public awareness programs under the American Petroleum Institute’s Recommended Practice (API RP) 1162.

Operators must inform the affected public about the potential hazards created by the pipeline in their neighborhood and how to recognize, respond to, and report a pipeline emergency. They must include in their programs procedures for advising affected municipalities, school districts, businesses, and residents along the pipeline; an overview of how pipelines operate; hazards that may result from activity in proximity to the pipeline; hazards due to possible pipeline operations; and measures undertaken to prevent impact to public safety, property, or the environment. They are required to give emergency and local public officials information on the location of transmission pipelines and on how operators prepare for emergencies to enhance emergency response and community growth planning.

The potential seriousness of pipeline accidents makes these many explicit instructions necessary. A significant challenge for PHMSA and the pipeline companies is ensuring that individuals and officials receive, fully understand, and implement the information sent to them as a result of API RP 1162. In an intergovernmental and intersectoral process as complicated as pipeline safety, building in detection mechanisms that serve as automatic early flags to potential problems is an important role for all stakeholders.

Pipelines and Informed Planning Alliance

Local land-use planning regulations can be one marker of prospective problems. To change these practices, planners, developers, and community leaders need guidance that is straightforward and not overly burdensome. To meet this need, PHMSA initiated the year-long PIPA effort to develop risk-informed guidance for land-use planning near transmission pipelines. It is partnering with a variety of stakeholders, including state and local government, community planners, property developers, real estate professionals, concerned citizens groups, and pipeline operators. This risk-informed guidance will become an additional layer of protection.

During the inaugural PIPA meeting on January 15, 2008, stakeholder representatives presented material to illustrate the challenges they will face, potential benefits that risk-informed guidance can offer, and need to work jointly to reduce the risks associated with land use near pipeline rights of way. They represent federal government agencies, state and local government associations, pipeline industry associations, public advocacy groups, and associations representing stakeholders from outside the pipeline industry. They have expertise in risk analysis; risk communication; land-use management, planning and development; and development regulation.

Some stakeholders join out of curiosity, perhaps to learn more about pipelines or PHMSA. Some seek guidance for planning and development around pipelines. Some come to share their experiences in implementing risk-informed land-use planning in their own jurisdictions. Some have their own individual agendas, and others simply come to learn. Still others—moved as Tony Fleming was to participate— come because of local tragedies, unanswered questions, a sense of responsibility to their office, and a desire to make a difference so future lives can be spared.

Consensus Process

PHMSA is encouraging more local governments and property developers to attend the next PIPA meeting so there can be greater inclusion in the consensus strategy it is using. PHMSA is using this strategy in the PIPA effort because of its success in past similar situations. Carl Johnson, administrator of PHMSA, explains,

“PHMSA believes firmly that the most useful and practical guidance can be developed through a consensus process. A key element is promotion of all stakeholders’ interests. Participants are decision makers. Involvement is critical to obtaining endorsement of the decision-making process and ultimately support for the results from the project. Fostering input, participation, and sharing among those persons who have an investment in and adjacent to the rights of way increases the chances that the end product will be broadly implemented.”

Task Team Goals

The Transportation Research Board’s Special Report (SR) 281, Transmission Pipelines and Land Use: A Risk-Informed Approach, provides a basis for land-use practices, zoning ordinances, and preservation of environmental resources issues with regard to pipeline rights of way and their maintenance. (The Transportation Research Board is a division of the National Research Council, which serves as an independent adviser to the federal government and others on scientific and technical questions of national importance.) During the kickoff meeting for the PIPA effort, the participants divided into three task teams: protecting communities, protecting transmission pipelines, and communication. Each team developed goals using guidelines from a PIPA steering group and the recommendations of SR 281.

Protecting Communities

This team is addressing the question, “What should pipeline safety stakeholders do, or avoid doing, adjacent to the pipeline rights of way to reduce the risk to communities?” It is evaluating best practices and creating simple, risk-informed guidance for

• defining recommended characteristics of land use adjacent to transmission rights of way and
• using enhanced building codes for structures adjacent to transmission rights of way.

Protecting Transmission Pipelines

This team is addressing the question, “What should pipeline safety stakeholders do, or avoid doing, on the rights of way to reduce the risk to transmission pipelines?” It is working to

• identify acceptable landowner uses and activities on the rights of way and ways to incorporate rights-of-way space in new developments;
• compile best practices for specification, acquisition, and maintenance of the rights of way by operators (best practices are to include managing encroachments on and vegetation in the rights of way); and
• develop best practices for the management and recording of land documents for planning agencies, operators, surveyors, and landowners.

Communication

This team is investigating the question, “How should the risks to transmission pipelines and communities be communicated to pipeline safety stakeholders?” They have begun to

• examine ways to foster early communication in the land development process among stakeholders;
• determine best practices for real-estate disclosure of transmission rights of way to potential purchasers of property;
• describe benefits, risk, and risk management of pipeline transportation; and
• formulate the PIPA risk communication plan and design the format of the final PIPA work product to communicate all PIPA results to stakeholders.

Using a consensus approach, each team will work during the year to identify best practices for land-use planning and development near transmission pipelines and prepare guidance for communicating the information to various stakeholder groups. The best practice information may take the form of guidance, recommendations, model ordinances, or suggested planning policies, regulations, or legislation.

Conclusion

The Clarke County accident, and its aftermath, illustrates the issues that the task teams will be handling. One issue is that some residents along the pipeline may have been unaware of its existence, despite the requirements of API RP 1162. How do officials build more reliable notification and a clear explanation into the process? Another issue is that the county had no way to prevent the replacement of the trailer because it did not have permit requirements in place for the pipeline right of way. How do officials create a process that will provide flags to officials regarding development or occupancy activity along the pipeline right of way? These are difficult, complicated questions, but through public-private collaboration, they can be answered and the public made safer.

References

American Petroleum Institute. Public Awareness Programs for Pipeline Operators. API Recommended Practice 1162, first edition, December 2003. committees.api.org/pipeline/ standards/index.html.

Transportation Research Board of the National Academies. Transmission Pipelines and Land Use: A Risk-Informed Approach. Special Report 281 (Washington, DC: 2004). onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/sr/sr281.pdf.

The second generation of Web access will change the way government delivers services and its relationship with the American public.

by Daniel Mintz

In spring 2006, after becoming chief information officer at the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT), I created a one-page, bulleted list of priorities and presented it in many forums inside and outside of the department. Various DOT stakeholders gave me feedback on these priorities, which I used for, among other things,modifying the list itself.

The original version of my fifth bullet (added in 2007), Government 2.0, said:“Exchange information in a consistent format and easy-to-access manner with key external and internal stakeholders, in particular the American public.” During one of my presentations, a senior official said they really liked the priority list, but could I change the beginning of the Government 2.0 bullet to “Exchange accurate information …”My response was that I was open to suggestions, but that the resulting bullet would be a lie.That is, the entire nature of the value of Government 2.0, in some sense, contradicts concerns over predictability, consistency, and accuracy for which we normally strive. In fact, the implications of Government 2.0—or, as it is sometimes called,Web 2.0— are more profound, and it will inevitably influence government, whether we plan for it or not.

The problems with my initial version of Government 2.0 were much broader than just the decision to insert or not insert the word “accurate.”Government 2.0 represents a better and more robust way of achieving timely and creative interaction with our stakeholders, in particular the American public. The federal government is using it more every day. The implementation of Government 2.0 raises numerous policy questions that will need to be addressed to take full advantage of the available capabilities.

Challenges

At present,most government agencies—as they grapple with ways to take advantage of the capabilities of this next generation of Internet—focus on the immediate problems it poses: security, privacy, and policy implications.The next administration will face two much larger challenges—we hope with the vision, focus, and stamina needed to address them—first, how best to build a government organization that can tolerate failure, at least in small doses, and second, how to make a government agency or department organizationally agile. Answering the first challenge will be necessary to start to take advantage of Government 2.0 capabilities. Answering the second will be required to maximize that utilization.This article does not provide answers to the two challenges, which would take too long and is outside its scope, but it does explain why those challenges are relevant and important.

Web 2.0

All the current candidates for president are using Web 2.0 capabilities, which provide the foundation for Government 2.0 efforts, as an integral part of their campaigns— including Web pages for online communication, Facebook and MySpace pages for social networking, and YouTube to hold presidential debates—much of which would not have been imagined during the last presidential contest a mere four years ago.The person elected from this group is likely to expect the same or more from government. Certainly, citizens drawn into the process by such campaign events will expect the same or more. Government 2.0 is fact already—and potentially transformational if it becomes a priority for the next administration.

Government 2.0

Historically (before the Internet), finding an item, or even the existence of an item, that met a defined set of requirements took significant amounts of time and (potentially) money. Researching a topic required physical effort. In many cases, such research would be impractical under time or cost constraints.

The first generation of the Web had people or companies creating content that others could access. Although this capability was powerful and useful, the information provided on the Web was static and passive. Once placed on the Web, it remained unchanged—unless and until the original provider updated it.

Government 2.0 is derived from the more general term,Web 2.0,which represents a second generation of Web usage.This second generation access differs greatly in at least three ways: it is participatory, pervasive, and integrated:

• Participatory.The original passive Internet—where a provider placed information on a Web page and a user read it—has changed. Users make their own content and, in the case of artificial worlds, become part of the Internet experience directly.
  
• Pervasive. Internet access has grown beyond the computer on a desk—to cell phones, cars, and even kitchen appliances. Hotels and coffee shops— and a growing number of other public and private spaces almost anywhere—feature wireless access.
  
• Integrated. More and more “things” are being connected to the Internet, from security access devices transmitting their status, to home security systems, to data devices implanted in a highway sending signals on the status of the road.We are entering a world where everything is connected to everything else.

Wikipedia and More

The initial impacts are felt in a variety of ways. For example,Web content is not controlled now by the original creator, who, over time, has become less and less clear. One of the best known examples of this is Wikipedia, which has become the largest single collection of information in existence. A small staff is responsible for coordinating all Wikipedia activities, but almost all of the content is provided by users, and most of the editing is accomplished by a coterie of volunteers.

The federal government has a variety of wikis. For example, the director of national intelligence has created Intellipedia, which is being used to collect information across a variety of federal intelligence agencies.The State Department has created Diplopedia,which allows its employees to share information about topics and experiences around the world.

The value of such wikis is that they allow groups of people who otherwise would have only limited contact with each other to pool their knowledge in a single repository available to all within that community. It not only increases information sharing, but also a sense of collegiality and partnership that otherwise might never arise.

Web 2.0, more recently, has taken an additional step—moving to a participatory model. Virtual worlds, the three-dimensional (3D) Internet, provide the capability to create an artificial world containing representations of real people called avatars. People are able to traverse such worlds, interacting with other people and obtaining information interactively.

One of the leading commercial examples is Second Life,where people or organizations are able to create islands where avatars (people) can congregate for social or business reasons. Second Life has become an active community, where information and services are bought and sold, social relationships thrive, training is conducted, and communities of interest are created.

A variety of government agencies have already created content on their own islands within Second Life. The National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration has a presence where it discusses issues about weather and other aspects of its mission.The State Department has an embassy where it recently sponsored a jazz festival for Second Life participants. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention uses its Second Life presence to provide health-related information.

New Challenges

The federal government faces a number of challenges that private industry does not when working with these kinds of public-facing Internet activities. First is the problem noted above—the desire that all published information produced by a government agency be “accurate.” Normally,wikis will undergo a continuous editing process, which allows them to approach “accuracy” over time, but they do not always start that way.

The second is a related problem, that any material a federal employee publishes can be taken as establishing or implying the establishment of formal policy. As anyone who has had their name appear in the press or has had to testify before the Congress will tell you, even offhand remarks and e-mails can be used in unexpected ways. A wiki or encounter in a virtual world is an “e-mail writ large.” Third, when the creation and maintenance of these sites crosses organizational boundaries—including federal, state, and local governments, as well as private stakeholders—responsibilities for the level of accuracy can become complex and unclear.

One final challenge when using 3D Internet sites like Second Life (as with any externally hosted solution) is a government agency’s inability to control what is happening anywhere in that virtual world—let alone on their specific island. Sometimes, what goes on can be embarrassing.

The Larger Context

Government 2.0 is not an isolated phenomenon but the next step in a continuum the Internet is forcing on all organizations as it continues to have an increasingly disruptive impact.

Cost

Economists use the term“transaction”to indicate the cost of an activity. By “cost,” they mean the resources required, whether money or a person’s time, to achieve the transaction.Not only does an organization change its behavior depending on transaction costs, but its structure.

In Wikinomics, Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams discuss the findings of Ronald Coase, a British researcher, who looked at why corporations existed and grew large. The reason Coase gave was that the cost of performing a transaction inside a corporation tended to be less expensive for many activities than for a transaction outside for that same activity. Thus, corporations over time acquired the activities that could be done less expensively in that fashion.

Measuring Results

For many years, computer technology did not have an impact on these inside and outside costs. The focus of information technology (IT) organizations and the organizations they supported, therefore,was optimizing the use of the computer technology. Thus, organizations focused on cost reduction, computer consolidation, centralized purchasing to achieve economies of scale, and, more recently, the creation of shared services throughout or across organizations (e-government initiatives, for example). The next logical step for government is to start focusing on how to measure and maximize the resulting programs rather than looking at how well the infrastructure supports them.

However, the Internet has changed this situation for the reasons noted. Now, the cost of performing a transaction may not be more outside an organization. For many larger organizations, the cost may be lower for increasing numbers and kinds of transactions outside rather than inside.

This is already having a dramatic impact on private sector organizations. Companies are increasing the use of external Internet-connected resources, including private individuals, to provide advertising advice, technical input, and even research and development capabilities that once would have been provided internally or from well-established and long-term partners.

Companies that learn to be organizationally “agile”—that can make internal changes to move specific functions outside the company and can train or hire staff members who understand how to use these new and changing relationships—will have a much higher chance of survival and success. The companies that are not agile run the risk of being driven out of business because of high-cost structures or their inability to move quickly enough to respond to changes in the marketplace.

Human Capital Implications

The impact on personnel will be significant. Capabilities required to define the business and contractual relationships and manage partnerships differ greatly from those for managing a hierarchical relationship. This change will require retraining or hiring new personnel who have these skills and capabilities.

Senior management will support these changes to obtain greater visibility into their organization. Junior staff members can more immediately impact policies and interface with the senior staff. Middle management will be threatened by these changes because its historic importance was often based on control of information up and down the organization.

Government will not be immune. Its private-sector partners will participate to stay in business; they will want to interface with the government in the same fashion. Young employees of the government will regard these capabilities as second nature; they will expect comparable capabilities in government—or they will look elsewhere for work.

Leadership Needed

We thus return to our initial challenges. Government 2.0 is in its infancy. No one knows what will work and what will fail. By its varied nature, these new Internet- enabled technologies allow unpredictable interactions between unexpected stakeholders producing unplanned results, none of which offer comfort to the typical government agency. To participate, government agencies will need to define small pilot projects and give the staff flexibility to experiment. In our current “blame first, ask questions later” environment, it will take strong leadership for this to occur.

The short-term advances of Government 2.0 are dramatic.The use of Internet-based information sharing and social networking has increased the opportunity to optimize the use of IT. Decreasing the costs of business transactions becomes possible. However, the real impact is likely to be organizational in nature—turning inside out the classical approach to organization structures and business relationships.

The federal government has struggled to make progress on the current set of e-government initiatives. It is a tribute to the Office of Management and Budget and the agencies that believe in the programs that so much has been done. The political and cultural hurdles of Government 2.0 will be more difficult to overcome, impacting more people more significantly. To have the best,most responsive government,we must tackle these issues.

Conclusion

There is argument about the date that Radio 2.0 was invented. Most of the important inventions relating to Radio 2.0 occurred in the 1920s. In its initial years, Radio 2.0 was treated the same as Radio 1.0—broadcasting stories and entertainment, essentially unchanged— even with the addition of video to Radio 2.0.

Over time, everyone realized that Radio 2.0,or Television, was not radio with pictures, but something entirely different. Television had a different relationship to its viewers,with a different method of participation and experience. None of that was obvious when it began. Similarly,what Government 2.0 will ultimately become and how it will affect government is only dimly understood today. It is likely to have a major impact on how government services are delivered, how government is organized, and ultimately how it relates to and with the American public.

Government 2.0 is a fact, not fiction. It will have an increasing presence in the next administration and will affect us all in ways barely imagined today.

References

Tapscott, Don, and Anthony D. Williams. Wikinomics: How Mass Collaboration Changes Everything (Portfolio: December 28, 2006).

Daniel Mintz is chief information officer at the U.S.Department of  Transportation. He has had a thirty-five-year career in the computer industry in the private sector, where he worked with commercial and government customers. His responsibilities include policy oversight for a $2.5 billion information technology budget and cyber-security, as well as operational responsibility for much of the desktop and network communications infrastructure and telephony infrastructure.He can be reached at dan.mintz@dot.gov.

Working together, federal, state, local, and private-sector entities plan and execute an intermodal transportation breakthrough in Denvers Southeast Corridor.

By Van R. Johnston, Wendy Haynes, and Claire-Lauren Schulz 

The megaprojects environment has changed dramatically since the 1970s. Forming and maintaining the strong coalitions required to sustain multibillion dollar, multiyear, and multiterm megaprojects have become more complicated. Our new “do-no-harm” era challenges megaproject managers to aggressively mitigate disruptions and attend to stakeholder concerns. As explored by Altshuler and Luberoff, themes that permeate most contemporary megaprojects include maintaining core constituencies, entrepreneurialism, mitigation, bottom-up federalism, and locally painless project funding. Cost escalation, delays, and obstacles have become the megaproject norm.

As metropolitan growth continues, more freeway and mass transit systems across the country will require reconstruction or expansion. Citizens—the customers of public services—are demanding higher quality transportation options in a timely manner, for less money, and with minimal disruption. Despite the inherent complexities of multibillion dollar public works projects, they continue to be planned and executed, putting public leadership to the test.

Background

The Colorado Transportation Expansion (T-REX) project—a megaproject that has exceeded expectations— is characterized by intermodality, design-build experimentation, creative financing, accelerated construction, and collaborative partnerships. Project leadership has based its goals on community, quality, budget, and schedule. Project officials have met these demanding goals, an exceptionally rare feat for a megaproject. Exemplary elements of the T-REX project could pave the way for the next generation of megaprojects.

Like most cities, Denver is growing, and traffic congestion is a major issue. Volume along Denver’s Southeast Corridor had exceeded its maximum capacity of 180,000 vehicles per day and was quickly approaching gridlock. To solve this problem, the Colorado Department of Transportation (CDOT) and Regional Transportation District (RTD) formed a unique partnership with the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) and Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to plan and execute extensive highway improvements and add light rail service to the Southeast Corridor.

After six years of planning and preparation,T-REX construction began in 2001 (Table 1).The project team received full funding, obtained the necessary approvals, and utilized an innovative design-build approach. Because of its unique leadership collaboration, this project will be completed two years early and within budget. Construction is scheduled for completion in September 2006, and light rail service along the Southeast Corridor will begin in November 2006.

The $1.67 billion T-REX project will transform the way people in the metro Denver area commute and live. Knowledgeable observers predict that it will improve transit and motorist travel time and reliability, increase transit ridership, enhance safety for motorists, and replace aging infrastructure. Public officials also anticipate that the project will reduce travel time and congestion on various freeway segments and major streets and support rapidly growing residential and commercial areas served by the Southeast Corridor.

Early Joint Involvement and Collaboration

Uncontrolled entrepreneurial egos, political biases, and overuse of consultants too often obscure and neglect the public interest during project planning. In the early planning stages, the parties involved will likely perform more effectively if a common goal can unite them. In the initial stages of the T-REX project, the parties agreed to work together toward mutually held goals.

They studied the Southeast Corridor to determine the most effective solution for the growing traffic problems. Many solutions were discussed, but none appeared to guarantee that traffic would be able to flow as smoothly as possible throughout the corridor during the project. All parties involved refused to advocate an incomplete solution, foreshadowing that a solution would likely involve intermodal elements. CDOT and RTD performed a Southeast Corridor major investment study (MIS).The MIS report reinforced earlier perceptions of the need for an intermodal project and recommended a rapid transit line and some highway improvements for safety—but no major highway improvements.

The study led to a proposal for the equivalent of ten highway lanes and six lanes of light rail line.The suggested plan would require the removal of several homes and businesses, which CDOT and RTD believed would sit poorly with the public, and they needed as much support as possible. Therefore, CDOT pursued studies to determine how to create more lanes without taking properties. After analyzing a “depressed” section of I-25, engineers determined that it would be possible to add the four lanes needed by cutting side-slopes and building retaining walls. Experts deemed the approach feasible, and CDOT and RTD moved forward.

Overcoming Fiscal and Regulatory Hurdles

Obtaining fiscal support for megaprojects has changed since the 1970s. Federal funds are granted only if a project receives authorization through a federal bill; the primary constituencies of such legislation consist of mass transit advocates, environmental groups, and other critics and skeptics. These constituencies make compromising on priorities and resolving project-related conflicts more difficult. However, usage of the federal funds granted has become more flexible. This flexibility has allowed for wider distribution of available resources and fewer restrictions on various facets of a project, an advantageous development for state and local governments, as exemplified in the T-REX project. In 1997,CDOT faced a tight reauthorization deadline. Fortunately, “policy entrepreneurs” deftly navigated through the political straits and helped alleviate the situation. The Transportation Commission identified the Southeast Corridor project as one of the most important strategic projects in the state.The passage of Senate Bill 1 in June 1997 (sponsored by Senator Ray Powers of Colorado Springs) authorized local officials to accelerate the construction of the project. A 10 percent funding provision that could be utilized for transit was included in this bill, which gave CDOT $84 million toward the project. CDOT would be able to immediately offer this $84 million to match U.S. Department of Transportation funds.CDOT convinced rural commissioners to use the funds on something other than highways, and the agency persuaded then- Governor Ray Romer that CDOT should retain authority over the project.

Southeast Corridor Project Team

In May 1998, Congress passed the new Federal Transportation Bill,TEA-21.All corridors in the metro Denver area were authorized; the act also included $10 million in federal funding earmarked specifically for the Southeast Corridor.

CDOT and RTD officially joined forces to form the Southeast Corridor project team to design and build improvements in the corridor. Shortly thereafter,CDOT and RTD began the environmental impact statement (EIS) process for the project, required under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1970, hiring Carter and Burgess for the EIS. The EIS must demonstrate that a project can be built with minimal detriment to the environment and that the adverse impacts are mitigated. Public officials incorporated environmental issues, public comment, and project design into the T-REX EIS to provide a sound basis for an accurate estimate of costs. In efforts to further mitigate environmental concerns, the T-REX EIS also considered a wide array of consequences, including “build” and “no-build” alternatives, right-of-way acquisition, and condemnation.

Project leaders worked hard to involve citizens in the process through various public open houses and numerous presentations to public and civic groups.To the surprise of many, the EIS was completed in eighteen months. Informed observers attribute the speedy completion to the collaborative nature of this project, during which those involved set aside differences and focused on project goals.

Transportation Revenue Notes

Funding for the project soon found the spotlight. In 1999, Bill Owens, who supported the Southeast Corridor project, took office as governor. He wanted to execute the project without a tax increase. For this reason, and to minimize local objections, the cost needed to be as painless as possible locally. This required elected leaders to consider a bonding strategy that would minimize the impact of inflation while accelerating project completion. The Colorado State Constitution limits the state in contracting debt in any form, including bonds and other long-term debt, without voter approval.As a result, project officials pursued an innovative approach for funding, Transportation Revenue Notes—also known as Grant Anticipation Revenue Vehicle (GARVEE) bonds—which still require voter approval. (GARVEE bonding is a federal instrument that allows future federal fund allocations to pay off bonds issued by the state.)

To enable CDOT to use GARVEE bonds, the Colorado legislature enacted legislation in 1999 giving it eligibility.CDOT began a massive statewide outreach campaign to acquire the necessary voter support for the GARVEE bond strategy. Throughout the campaign, CDOT’s message was that all Coloradans would benefit, not only Denver residents. In November 1999, Colorado voters overwhelmingly approved the two bond initiatives to fund the highway project, as well as the light rail in the Southeast Corridor.

As project costs rose and federal aid decreased, GARVEE bonds provided local governments a means to accelerate T-REX while reducing costs.With this bonding strategy,RTD sold bonds for the light rail, and CDOT sold bonds both to help finance the highway portion of the Southeast Corridor and to help other state highway projects. CDOT also borrowed against federal funds not yet granted. Without the issuance of GARVEE bonds to provide up-front capital with the ability to use federal funds, CDOT would have had to default to pay-as-you-go financing, resulting in a project completion date of 2017 instead of 2006.

Other Public and Private Funding

In 1999, numerous bills passed, helping T-REX move forward.They allowed for contractor selection on design-build best value, increased private participation in public transportation facilities, petition for inclusion into the RTD tax district by landowners adjacent to preexisting RTD boundaries, and any necessary relocation of utilities.

The City of Seattle was not fulfilling its federal commitments to transit, which ultimately freed up $500 million in federal funds for transportation. Federal officials granted the City of Denver high priority for these funds, due at least in part to sound local planning and mitigation efforts. In November 2000, the FTA signed a $525 million full funding grant agreement in RTD’s name.With federal and state support, local governments pledged $30 million in matching funds.

The T-REX project has effectively reexamined and reengineered ways to obtain funding and overcome regulatory hurdles. As costs for public projects continue to rise, the processes associated with obtaining funding and complying with regulations will likely become more complicated and competitive. Other project officials should take heed of the T-REX experience and respond nimbly to changing circumstances.

A Different Project Delivery Method: Design-Build

Many past public projects have utilized the traditional design-bid-build approach. In this approach, the design plans are completed first, and contractors bid and build the sections in separate phases. Some public officials argue that this approach has resulted in higher costs, delays, dissatisfaction, and quality problems. Clearly, such undesirable outcomes would conflict with T-REX officials’ commitment to community, quality, budget, and schedule. Therefore, they selected the innovative design-build delivery method, under which a single contractor team designs and builds an entire project, for a predetermined price, with oversight from a designated authority. The method is entrepreneurial; it decentralizes authority while empowering those who play a direct, vital role in implementation.

CDOT and RTD chose Southeast Corridor Constructors (SECC), a joint venture team consisting of Kiewit Construction and Parsons Transportation Group, as the design-build contractor for T-REX. SECC was chosen through a best-value process in which CDOT and RTD jointly evaluated and weighted the technical and price aspects of the proposal.The experience and prior accomplishments of the team also impressed project officials. The deal was sealed when SECC agreed to finish the project ahead of schedule and $39 million under the $1.23 billion bid price.

Execution

After completing project planning,T-REX officials moved to execution, which not only involved constructing the project, but also managing traffic and maintaining public support. Table 2 depicts the intermodal elements of the project, and Figure 1 depicts the scope.

Given the diverse nature of the project and its stakeholders, the project team knew that success would require transparency and good will as it coordinated the various elements of the megaproject. Collaboration, accountability, and consistency became the guiding principles. Adherence to these principles allowed the project team to overcome challenges, develop and maintain relationships with the public, and reach early completion.

This multimodal project entailed a multiagency partnership.The T-REX project team took a “one team, one project” approach to focus on the best interests of the project and its stakeholders. CDOT and RTD formalized their partnership with an intergovernmental agreement (IGA) in September 1999. This agreement, besides explaining the design-build concept and the financing methods, assigned responsibilities to each agency, establishing a benchmark for accountability. Through this agreement, both agencies agreed to work together to fund and build T-REX through a designbuild, best-value contract. In addition, in October 1999 the FHWA and FTA also formalized an agreement regarding their roles on T-REX.This interagency agreement, similar to the IGA, also outlined the principles of the project and assigned responsibility.

CDOT,RTD, FHWA, and FTA all agreed to work as “one DOT,” coordinating efforts together on T-REX. After signing their own partnership agreements, all four agencies signed a partnering charter emphasizing the importance of community, safety, cost, quality, schedule, and teamwork in the project. Specifically, the four agencies agreed to the following project goals: F Minimize inconvenience to the public F Meet or beat the total program budget of $1.67 billion F Provide for a quality project F Meet or beat the schedule to be fully operational by June 30, 2008.

Retrospective

The modern era of megaprojects differs from eras past. Funding limitations and demands for higher quality public projects require project managers to explore alternative ways to deliver better projects with more stringent budgets. Citizens expect project outcomes to be achieved with minimal harm to neighborhoods and the general environment. Public managers must find ways to make government work better and cost less by reexamining and reengineering work programs and processes. Even in this challenging era, the T-REX project demonstrates that completion of a successful megaproject is possible.

T-REX has shown that it is possible to effectively meet the needs of stakeholders in spite of limited resources, higher public expectations, do-no-harm values, and mitigation strategies. Because of design-build innovation and effective leveraging of federal resources, T-REX will be completed earlier and at lower cost than a project using a traditional approach—a rarity in the history of megaprojects.

The success of design-build and innovative project financing can be attributed to the collaborative partnerships— the backbone of the project. Personal egos and agency politics were set aside. By collaborating, the T-REX team drew upon a multitude of skills, knowledge, and experience, which allowed for innovative, effective execution. Collaboration—and clear lines of accountability—were essential to the design-build environment. The quality and speed of decision-making increased dramatically. Individual accountability among the agencies played a crucial role in meeting the goals of the project. T-REX has focused on the task, remained under budget, and stayed on track.

Neither unanticipated disruption nor taxes plagued the public. This project nears completion unhindered by the controversy and contentiousness that so often characterize megaprojects.

Acknowledgment

The authors thank the following for their contributions to this article: Cal Marsella, general manager of RTD; Larry Warner, former project director of T-REX; Betty McCarty, administrative officer, Denver Regional Council of Governments; Toni Gatzen, T-REX public information manager; and Allison Hodge,T-REX staff.

References

Altshuler, Alan A., and David E. Luberoff. MegaProjects:The Changing Politics of Urban Public Investment (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 2003).

Johnston,Van R.,Wendy Haynes, George Scheurenstuhl, Bill Vidal, Tom Norton, and Richard Clarke.T-REX Panel for the National American Society for Public Administration (ASPA). ASPA National Conference, Denver, March 31–April 4, 2006.

Johnston,Van R.“Caveat Emptor: Customers vs. Citizens.” The Public Manager,Vol. 24, No. 3 (Fall 1995), pp. 11–14.

Moler, Steve. U. S. Department of Transportation, Federal Highway Administration.“Colossal Partnership: Denver’s $1.67 Billion T-REX Project.” Public Roads,Vol. 65, No. 2 (Sep/Oct 2001).

T-REX Project:Transportation Expansion Project. 2006. http://www.trexproject.com/.

T-REX Fact Book. About T-REX. 2003. http://www.trexproject.com/.

Van R. Johnston, PhD, is a professor of management and policy at the Daniels College of Business, University of Denver. He can be reached at vjohnsto@du.edu. 

Wendy Haynes, PhD, is the graduate program coordinator and professor of public administration at Bridgewater State College, Massachusetts, and former first assistant IG for megaprojects for Massachusetts. She can be reached at whaynes@bridgew.edu.

Claire- Lauren Schulz is a graduate student at the Daniels College of Business, University of Denver. She can be reached at cschulz@du.edu.

By following practical guidelines from the new field of resiliency psychology, public managers can navigate through rough periods of change and bounce back from setbacks.

By Al Siebert

In today’s world of nonstop change, public managers need a highly resilient workforce. In the past, government managers ran stable, efficient organizations, which operated for decades without much change. Public-sector workers did what their managers told them to do and were evaluated on how well they followed their job descriptions.

Today’s managers must implement deep reorganization and constant change on reduced budgets while trying to meet required objectives. Every branch of government has shifted from needing cooperative, compliant employees, to needing self-motivated, change-proficient, adaptable workers capable of performing in new ways without up-to-date job descriptions. This demand distresses many managers and workers.

When public-sector employees list their challenges and difficulties, most report that they feel pressured to do more work, of better quality, in less time, with fewer people, in new ways, with a reduced budget—while worrying whether their jobs are safe. Some succumb to this pressure, some don’t.

Public managers can make a difference in how well their workers cope by using simple techniques to strengthen their resiliency. Public managers who dwell on trying to overcome employee resistance to change fail because trying to get people to stop doing something is a negative goal. A positive goal is to develop resiliency strengths in workers who are committed to their work and have positive attitudes toward change.

Public-sector managers who work proactively to strengthen workforce resiliency gain many benefits. Resilient workers hold up well under pressure, adapt quickly to change, get the right things done with fewer mistakes, and are sick less often. Resiliency is not an ability one either has or does not have.

Resiliency strengths can be developed, just as proficiency in any sport or activity can be learned and developed. How can managers strengthen workforce resiliency?

• Learn which resiliency strengths to develop in employees.
• Know the factors that support or impair worker resiliency.
• Be a good role model of resiliency.

Resiliency psychology offers the following practical guidelines for strengthening workforce resiliency.

Support Optimum Health and Well-Being

At the most basic level, the people who hold up well under constant pressure live in ways that sustain their health and well-being. Wellness is a way of life. Actively encourage employees to follow widely known practices for living a healthy lifestyle.

Increase Positive Feelings

Laughing, pleasant relationships, enjoyable moments, and feelings of job satisfaction expand a person’s cognitive skills and strengthen resiliency. Negative emotions such as fear, anger, anxiety, and worry constrict a person’s cognitive skills and weaken resiliency. Award-winning research by psychologist Barbara Frederickson has documented a direct connection between positive feelings, resiliency, good health, flourishing, good relationships, and effective work teams.Work teams observed to have a high ratio of positive to negative emotions flourish while work teams with little positive feeling tend to languish.The lowest positive-negative ratio needed for flourishing is 3 to 1, a ratio of 5 to 1 is best.

Managers who threaten workers and intentionally keep them fearful are acting irrationally because negative emotions increase the probability of mistakes, accidents, employee sickness, and having good people quit. Managers who create a positive, appreciative atmosphere that promotes job satisfaction strengthen resilience, increase mental alertness and accuracy, and keep the best employees strongly committed to the organization.

Provide an Emotional Paycheck

Workers become more engaged and committed when they experience emotional satisfaction.Your governmental organization renders a monetary paycheck for each worker, but your job is to provide them with an emotional paycheck. You do this by purposefully arranging for the people under your direct control to experience the following feelings each week:

• My work is important and meaningful.
• I am responsible.
• I am recognized for achievements.
• I have the opportunity for professional growth.
• I am valued and appreciated.
• I have accomplished something.

To impart these feelings requires good emotional intelligence in a manager—an important area of professional growth.

Forest Service

In recent years, the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Forest Service has undergone a massive national reorganization. For the first hundred years of its existence, it had a network of regions, forests, and ranger districts that operated autonomously. This structure, created by Gifford Pinchot in 1905, had been designed so that it would not take a district ranger more than one day riding on horseback to reach his forest supervisor’s office.

As the USDA Forest Service entered its second century, the national executive leadership team saw that the old structure was inefficient. The reorganization of the Forest Service established a central service center in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which led to layoffs and relocations that disrupted the lives and families of thousands of employees.

The director of the new human capital management division, Roy Roosevelt, understood that a positive outlook within his unit was essential. “I knew it was important for all of us in human resources to respond with positive coping energy to every new challenge,” Roy says. “Whenever a new demand hits us, my response is, ‘The fun never stops!’ I kept stirring up enthusiasm for handling the reorganization really well, urged everyone to support people in the field, and gave them constant praise and appreciation. I want everyone to know that as the Forest Service strives to meet the competitive challenges of today and the future, human resources will play a major role.”

Emphasize Problem-Solving Responses

Resilient people, when faced with difficulty, focus on solving the challenge. The least resilient people become overly emotional, portray themselves as victims, blame others, and dwell on their misfortune.

You increase workforce resiliency by arranging for workshops on effective problem-solving methods. Content should include logical “left brain” methods, creative “right brain” methods, group brainstorming, and how to find simple, practical solutions.

Encourage Self-Motivated Learning

Highly resilient people continuously learn new ways of doing things, seek new experiences, and frequently change how they interact with their circumstances. The least resilient people drift into a “calcified” condition where they try to avoid change and new experiences. Childlike curiosity, playfulness, and self-motivated, self-managed learning lead to advanced resilience skills. We are marvelously blessed with the ability to replace old behaviors by learning new ones at any age.

A problem with traditional training is that it conditions employees to be passive learners who wait to be instructed. In contrast, self-motivated, self-managed learning leads to becoming more skillful, change-proficient, and resilient year after year.This means that traditional training methods are self-defeating when used to try to increase workforce resiliency.

Resilient people are like children who never grow up.They are curious and get excited about learning better ways of doing things. Encourage workers to ask questions. Asking good questions is a far more useful skill in today’s world than knowing answers that someone taught. Habitual curiosity leads quick orientation to new realities and playful curiosity can lead to practical problem-solving—one of the most basic resiliency skills.

A professional growth area for budding managers is learning how to manage with questions. Keep in mind, if you want resilient employees, you can’t continue to manage workers like they were managed in the past.

Adapt to Circumstances

Adapting to new circumstances is the key to survival in all of nature. If you always respond one way and never in the opposite way, you sometimes will be helpless to stop yourself from automatically reacting in a self-defeating manner.

The flexibility found in highly resilient people comes from their complex inner nature. Here is a partial list of counterbalanced personality qualities typically found in people who overcome setbacks to achieve solid career success:

• Creative and analytical
• Serious and playful
• Hard-working and lazy
• Sensitive and tough
• Cautious and trusting
• Unselfish and selfish
• Self-appreciating and self-critical
• Impulsive and thorough
• Optimistic and pessimistic.

Metropolitan Bus System

The new operations manager for a metropolitan bus system studied the budget expenditures and saw that the annual cost for paper towels in the operations budget was over $25,000. “Why is this cost so high?” he wondered.

He spent many days in the bus barns observing the drivers and bus cleaning crews. When the drivers came on duty, he saw each one pick up a new package of paper towels from the supply room on the way to their assigned bus. During their shifts, the drivers would break open a package of towels and clean up messes left by passengers on the handrails and seats. At the end of their shifts, the drivers would leave the partially used packages of towels on the bus. The bus cleaning crews would then remove them and throw them out. When he looked in the dumpsters, the manager saw large stacks of unused paper towels thrown into the trash.

Here was the problem. One package of towels for each driver, every shift, every day, added up to a major expense. He talked about what he’d observed with his boss, the drivers, and the cleaning crews. The solution they decided to implement was to install towel dispensers on each bus and give the cleaning crews responsibility for keeping the dispensers filled. The cost of paper towels dropped immediately, saving the transit system over $6,000 a year.

This manager followed all the steps for rational problem-solving. He identified the problem, was clear about the desired goal, collected information, discussed several solutions with people who had to make a solution work, and measured the results.

By using a problem-solving response to any challenge or difficulty, it becomes a valuable habit. But more than that, when you invite people to put their minds to work and solve problems, they feel more job satisfactions and make sure that their solutions work.

How many of these pairs of counterbalanced qualities describe you? Can you add more?

Counterbalanced personality qualities are signs of advanced emotional intelligence.Your resilience in rapidly changing circumstances comes from having many such pairs of traits, whatever they may be. The longer the list of pairs of counterbalanced, paradoxical traits you recognize in yourself, the more emotionally complex you are, which can increase your chances of successfully handling any situation that develops.

Balance Positivity with Negativity

Managers with positive attitudes typically handicap themselves by having a negative attitude about negative thinking. When managers suppress disagreement and negative thinking during meetings, they create a condition called “groupthink,” in which groups make bad decisions.

Power is derived from being at the choice point between counterbalanced forces. A sign that managers have developed advanced emotional intelligence is that they feel comfortable with and can counterbalance positive thinking with negative thinking. Barbara Clark, former City Treasurer in Portland, Oregon, says, “A negativity specialist will make you think through your plans better, point out flaws, and warn you about what could go wrong. I would thank the Lord when I had a negative thinker in my department!”

Employ a Flexible Style

Do you expect that everyone will respond well to the way that you want to manage, or do you manage people in a way that gets the best responses from each individual? In today’s workplace, a flexible management style gets the best results.

Two of the most well researched personality factors are “external locus of control” and “internal locus of control.” Hundreds of research studies show that people who cope best in difficult situations score high on measures of “internal control” beliefs.They feel personally responsible for how well their lives go, and know that they have some control over events and their responses to events. People who feel helpless and victimized, and blame others, score high on measures of “external control” beliefs.They do not believe that their personal efforts could make anything better. They believe that solutions to their unhappy condition are under the control of other people and external forces.

A fascinating truth about the human mind is that whatever you believe, you will find evidence that supports your belief. Thus it is that “external” and “internal” belief systems are both self-validating.

As a manager, it is nonproductive to try to get employees to change from their way of thinking to your way of thinking. If you adapt how you interact with each worker to get the best results from them, everything will flow much easier for all.

Figure 1 is a visual guideline on how to use a flexible management style that gets the best results from a diverse workforce.You start by observing where each person is on the external- internal dimension. Use the appropriate management mode with them, and then follow up with appreciation.

This management strategy lets you avoid a typical failing in managers: spending most of your time trying to improve the performance of your least productive workers. A much smarter strategy is to tell people who need to be told what to do exactly what you want them to do. Leave your best workers alone to do what they know has to be done.Then devote most of your management time to the middle group who want to learn how to be more effective. It’s a much better experience for all.

Bounce Back Stronger

Resilience means being able to bounce back from setbacks that may seem overwhelming at first. When resilient people have their lives disrupted, they handle their feelings in healthy ways.They allow themselves to feel grief, anger, loss, and confusion when hurt and distressed, but they don’t let it become a permanent state. An unexpected outcome is that they not only heal, but often bounce back stronger than before.

Public-sector managers and employees who function at the highest resilience level are best suited for a world of nonstop change. They adjust quickly to new circumstances and move confidently through chaotic turmoil to reach good outcomes.

Resilient people handle major difficulties more easily than others. They expect to overcome workplace disruptions in ways that work out well, and the struggle to overcome difficulties can develop new strengths. Resilient organizations have stories of how adversities in their past turned out to be valuable experiences.

We live in a constantly changing world. Some people make their lives difficult by resisting or fighting the ongoing changes. Others adapt and flow with them— it’s each person’s choice. Managers who understand the importance of workforce resiliency can help employees (and themselves) navigate through rough periods of change skillfully and easily.

Al Siebert, PhD, is director of The Resiliency Center in Portland, Oregon. He has extensive experience conducting workshops for public-sector groups and is director of the resiliency camp at the U.S. Office of Personnel Management’s Eastern Management Development Center. His book, The Resiliency Advantage, won the Independent Publishers 2006 Best Self- Help Book Award. It includes many stories of public-sector employees as outstanding examples of resiliency. He can be contacted at http://www.resiliencycenter.com.This article is based on his workforce resiliency session at the 2006 Excellence in Government conference. 

References

Frederickson, B. L., and M. Losada.“Positive affect and the complex dynamics of human flourishing.” American Psychologist, Vol. 60, No. 7 (2005), pp. 678–686.

Siebert,A. The Resiliency Advantage: Master Change,Thrive under Pressure, and Bounce Back from Setbacks (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2005).

Government executives and human capital professionals offer a road map for designing and implementing effective performance management systems. 

By Bill Trahant

What’s the best way for government executives to create high-performance cultures in federal agencies? In March 2007 testimony before the House Subcommittee on the Federal Workforce, Bob Tobias, Director of Public Sector Executive Education at American University (AU), said it will never happen until you “change the behavior of every employee in government.” And that won’t happen, he said, until you “build robust performance management systems that can objectively evaluate different levels of job performance and guarantee a fully funded reward system.”

Creating such systems is difficult, Tobias told lawmakers.They must be very robust and able to synthesize large amounts of data relating to work standards, job requirements, and other performance specifications. What’s more, designing them is a “time-consuming process that requires the close collaboration of government employees and their managers,” he added.

Government Focus on Performance Management

The design and implementation of performance management systems have become a frequent topic of recent government executive conversation. Agencies are striving to comply with The President’s Management Agenda (PMA) and the Human Capital Assessment and Accountability Framework (HCAAF), the U.S. Office of Personnel Management (OPM) road map for transforming government human capital management.

For these reasons, “How to Build Effective Performance Management Systems” was the topic of a briefing for government executives at the National Press Club in Washington,DC, on May 29, 2007.Held under the auspices of AU’s Institute for the Study of Public Policy Implementation and sponsored by Watson Wyatt Worldwide, the forum brought together government executives from a range of agencies. It dealt with everything from the effective design of performance management systems to the management concerns and organizational and political obstacles that often stand in the way of their deployment in agencies (see box).

Featured speakers included AU’s Tobias;Marta Perez, chief human capital officer at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security; and Bill Leidinger, former assistant secretary for management and former chief human capital officer and chief information officer at the U.S. Department of Education (ED).

Cultural Challenges

Tobias noted that cultural impediments have prevented these systems from being easily implemented in government agencies in the past. “Since 1993, when Congress passed the Government Performance and Results Act, agencies have struggled to identify outcome versus output goals,” he said.

One reason is that agencies and government executives find it hard to reduce achievement of their public mission to clear and measurable objectives.“At the program level,managers find it tough to define measurable program outcomes.And at the supervisory level, supervisors have trouble translating organizational goals into individual employee job requirements and performance expectations.”

At the same time,Tobias said, supervisors and employees have struggled to redefine their working relationships— to put more focus on measurable job results and less on pro forma job evaluations. Still,Tobias asserted that if managers and employees can come together to collaboratively design and implement performance management systems, they have the potential to “totally transform” their long standing traditional relationships in the federal government.

Performance management can also energize employees to perform at higher levels and assume greater job ownership,Tobias noted, because they see how their everyday jobs are connected to the strategic goals and priorities of their organization. He added, “When employees understand the linkage between their efforts and desired agency outcomes, their engagement in their work and productivity increases.” Involving employees in defining job requirements also “enables managers to leverage the natural desire of employees to improve agency goal achievement,” said Tobias.

Today, however, he said most federal agencies don’t do a very good job of identifying output and outcome goals, so “employees feel uncertain about how their individual job efforts (and performance) impact overall organizational goals and performance.” Manager-Employee Dialogue Like Tobias, Perez, a principal architect of HCAAF while at OPM,noted that the key to making performance management work is getting supervisors and employees to work together to define critical job requirements and articulate performance metrics to which both sides can agree.“It’s all about good communication,” she said.

Perez noted that the public sector has traditionally emphasized performance appraisal and not performance planning, coaching, and development. Conversations between managers and employees “traditionally have been about activities—not outcomes,” she said. By contrast, she added,“Performance management involves continuous dialogue between managers that is focused on achieving specific, concrete results. There is shared responsibility and involvement by managers and employees alike.Thus, it becomes a workplace partnership.” Perez is striving to align the work of the Department of Homeland Security’s (DHS’s) twenty-two component agencies with the overarching strategic goals of DHS as a department. One way is by holding focus groups with managers and employees in all DHS components to articulate work standards and evolving job requirements in key DHS positions and operating areas.

Perez said doing so is critical to building employee engagement with DHS’s strategic mission goals. In an agency like DHS, which is concerned with evolving mission requirements related to national security, Perez said “the need for continuous dialogue” about job requirements, work standards, and results is especially acute, and an activity to which she and other DHS executives give constant attention.

To foster good communication between supervisors and employees,DHS intensively trains managers in goal setting and interpersonal communication—in the classroom and through webcasts and teleconferences. Such training is critical because “managers must be trained on how to do performance evaluations with employees, how to communicate job expectations, and how to effectively engage with employees to define work requirements,” she said.

To be fully operational, performance management must be integrated with “operational planning, goal setting, and decision making,” Perez emphasized.

How, Perez was asked, do organizational discussions about performance at DHS actually get translated into specific job activities and performance metrics? Moreover, how does the department take the work tasks of individual employees and guarantee that they “roll up” to serve the overarching goals of DHS as the guardian of our nation’s security?

Job Linkage to Mission Goals

“Today, we’re trying to have as much dialogue about work expectations and job tasks as we can, to help people understand the linkage of their work with the overall mission goals of DHS,” Perez said. She showed how this works in the department by describing how one strategic DHS priority—safety and terrorism prevention at the nation’s airports—is broken down into specific component objectives, unit and program objectives, and individual and team objectives.

To ensure airport safety, Perez said a key objective of the Transportation Security Administration (TSA), the DHS component agency charged with protecting the nation’s transportation systems, including airports, is “to deploy layers of security to protect the traveling public and the nation’s transportation system.”To accomplish this objective,TSA has developed specific airport priorities and goals, which include improving the efficiency and effectiveness of airport screening and maintaining an excellent safety record.

These priorities and goals are advanced by airport managers’ taking specific actions such as improving efficiency and quality of airport screening, she said. These actions are then made operational through the daily work tasks that individual airport screeners and security personnel perform at the nation’s airports.

“You can see, from this simple example, a framework of performance management goals and measures that aligns the work of people at all levels of TSA around the strategic organizational goals of DHS,”said Perez. It serves to create a strong organizational line of sight on key departmental priorities and focuses on results. (Frontline TSA personnel, and their immediate supervisors, get evaluated, according to Perez, on metrics such as “wait time” for passengers going through airport security, and the goal is to ensure that“wait time for 80 percent of people going through airport security is 10 minutes or less.”) .

Constant Dialogue

At DHS, Perez emphasized,defining critical work and the standards by which it is evaluated is an ongoing process because ensuring airport security requires constant review and vigilance.“We spend a lot of time in DHS and TSA talking about how to improve the security of airports while, at the same time, creating more efficiency in the way we do business,”said Perez,noting that this is the subject of regular conversations she has with TSA Administrator Kip Hawley and other DHS executives.

Perez said DHS could make airports so secure that nobody would be able to move through them. But “we don’t want to do that.We want people to be able to travel, and to move through our airports as quickly and safely as possible.” Perez told attendees that when agencies clearly define critical work requirements and align them with strategic goals, it supports a strong employee line of sight and focuses jobs on performance. “When you articulate metrics so they reflect program priorities, organizational conversations about performance become clear, and judging individual employee performance becomes easier,” she said.That’s because employees know what is expected of them and on what they will be judged.

Perez noted that for performance management systems to take firm root in agencies, they can’t be seen as a function run by the human resources department. Instead,“agency line managers and executives must clearly own the performance management system” they design and build, so that employees will accept it as a fair and credible tool to objectively evaluate people’s job performance.

Senior Leadership Commitment

Even that, however, isn’t enough to ensure complete success with performance management, said Perez.Top government executives and political appointees must be enthusiastic backers of performance management, she added, and must promote its importance to agency success at every opportunity. “Leaders from the top of the organization down to…first-level supervisors must have continuous conversations about performance with employees. They must communicate a vision to employees of where the organization is going, and the critical role that employees have to play in making completion of that mission a reality.”

Bill Leidinger agreed that an agency’s top leaders must be vigorous champions of performance management, if it is to get real traction inside federal agencies today.But he worried that such top-level leadership support often isn’t there.“That’s one of the biggest concerns I have about performance management in the federal government today. I don’t know where the leadership is to make it work. I mean,‘Where is it?’”

Leidinger noted that for performance management to take hold in federal government culture, leadership support of performance management must be consistent at all levels of government.“The president, cabinet secretaries, and all political appointees have to be involved in driving change right along with employees.They need to roll up their sleeves, and also give employees the tools they need to make it work,” he said.

When it comes to agency transformation, and the importance of top leadership in driving change, Leidinger knows what he’s talking about. As a top ED executive in the early 2000s, he was intimately involved in massively reengineering the talent recruitment process at the department. “That initiative required a lot of hands-on effort by everybody, including top execs,” says Leidinger.“It wasn’t something we did through a few memos and town hall meetings.”

Leidinger said the same kind of commitment is required today to design and implement performance management systems in federal agencies.“To play a leadership role in agency transformation today—and specifically to implement performance management—top government executives and political appointees need to spend time with the people they supervise.They need to manage their organizations by walking around, and by intimately understanding the nature of people’s jobs.”

Four Openers

What does Leidinger suggest to managers and political appointees who want to create strong performance- based cultures in their agencies?

For starters, he said, managers and supervisors must deeply understand the nature of the daily work their subordinates do. “You don’t get that understanding by sitting in an office.You need to walk around and talk to people.You need to ask them what they’re doing, how they do it, and why they do it.You also need to understand the constraints they face, and figure out how you can help them do their jobs better.”

Second, managers need to look for inefficiencies in the organization and for skill gaps in people, Leidinger said.“Again, unless you spend time walking around and talking to people, you won’t know where these weaknesses exist.And you won’t have any idea of how to align people’s work with your agency’s strategic or mission goals.”

Third, government executives must take action when they find impediments to people doing their work effectively, said Leidinger. For example, he says, “If you find skills gaps in employees, you must give people training and coaching to remedy those gaps. If you find people’s work isn’t clearly related to the agency’s goals, you need to look at that, and create better alignment. You can do this in focus groups and through small, intense team meetings. Otherwise, you won’t improve efficiency or productivity.”

Finally, Leidinger said, federal agencies today need to spend more time on careful and systematic workforce analysis.“You need to understand the current demographics of your workforce and the current state of people’s skills in your agency,” he said. “You also need to carefully project your agency requirements and skill needs into the near-term future in order to get a strategic handle on how to align people around critical agency or mission priorities going forward.”

Doing the aforementioned is critical, said Leidinger, if an agency wants to create a performance-based culture and a line of sight to strategic mission goals.

Patience in Process

Under the best circumstances, Leidinger cautioned, aligning employees with mission goals and connecting everyone’s job to specific organizational outcomes doesn’t happen overnight. It takes time. “In my opinion, any agency that wants to implement an effective performance management system must commit two to three years to develop,modify, and tweak that system to make it work,” he asserted.

Part of the reason is that agencies need time to delineate job tasks and performance criteria for every employee and to logically link daily employee job tasks to the overarching strategic needs and mission requirements of the agency for which they work. In some cases,making those connections isn’t that hard,he said. In others,he says,“It’s tough to determine how someone who’s processing transactions deep inside the organization personally impacts the outcomes of their agency.You need time [therefore] to make those connections, and to create mutual understandings (between a supervisor and an employee) around job tasks and performance expectations.”

The need to create organization-wide buy-in and train large numbers of managers in performance-based job evaluations are other reasons that implementing successful performance management systems takes time, according to Leidinger. That’s okay, he said, emphasizing that the process of implementing performance management is best thought of as a long term organizational initiative that will have multiple phases, each building on the best practices, successes, and organizational learning of the previous phases.

“You’re not going to create the perfect performance-driven organization overnight,” Leidinger said.“In fact, most studies show that real, sustainable culture change and organizational transformation take five to seven years to achieve.”

Road Map

As part of his presentation, Leidinger laid out a series of recommendations—a road map of sorts—for government executives and political appointees who are designing and building performance management systems for their agencies.

“Think of t