Transforming the workforce

The business of transportation is based upon people—transportation professionals—working to improve the lives of the 7 million citizens of Virginia and the thousands of drivers who pass through the commonwealth every day.

“We have to learn from our history and build on our strengths,” said Commissioner Ekern, “And one of those strengths is the dedicated men and women who have made it so citizens regard VDOT as a supplier of a vital public service similar to the services provided by police and fire departments.”

Transportation professionals in fields as diverse as engineering, contract management, surveying, technology, design, administration and skilled maintenance crews that work around the clock to provide emergency response will all play a role on our journey. In all of the core areas of VDOT’s business, we will need to continue to strengthen our skills to fill critical needs. As technology and industry practices continue to advance, VDOT employees in every discipline will need training in order to stay at the top of their fields.

The right size for VDOT

Much attention has been paid to the size of the VDOT workforce. This is an important part of our journey as we balance our staffing needs for the work we complete in house while adjusting our size for the work we transfer to the private sector. But VDOT’s size is not the only factor in the changes taking place in the workforce.

“Transforming the workforce is about more than how many people are on the payroll,” said Commissioner Ekern. “It’s about attracting, developing and retaining the skills needed to keep pace with the future needs of our agency.”

VDOT has downsized over the past few years. At just below 8,800 employees, we are at our 1965 staffing level (8,834 employees) while we are responsible for a system that has grown from 49,800 miles of highway in 1965 to 57,500 miles today. While this managed streamlining has achieved a significant reduction in our workforce and costs, VDOT administrators are mindful that a certain number of employees will be necessary to perform core missions. VDOT will continue to retain responsibility where we should, while transferring work to the private sector where we can and where we should.

Moving forward, VDOT will need to align its workforce to support core service areas, such as emergency response, and new business lines such as operations, research, project delivery and planning. Work is already under way within the agency to manage this shift. Recent examples include the creation of the Innovative Financing and Innovative Project Delivery teams to pursue public-private partnerships to complete needed construction projects and the creation of our regional operations organization to implement VDOT’s new focus on systems operations.

At the same time, VDOT’s management of our work is changing, which may require new skills to support these business changes. For example, VDOT increased the number of required professional engineer positions from four to 271 specifically to support the delivery of projects.

Q. How has the requirement to have a licensed professional engineer on projects changed the way projects are managed?

A. “I think this transition has been a positive change, but not without challenges. We have certainly made strides by improving our contracts with more detailed constructability and bid-ability reviews, by focusing on contract schedules, time limits and budgets, and by raising the bar on construction quality. There are a few challenges we continue to face. For one, we need to be careful not to add too much to the roles of construction managers so they can stay close to issues at the project level. We also still struggle with a few undefined areas of responsibility between the district and residencies.

“The resources added to the construction program—the area construction engineers, project controls engineers and construction project managers—have been a key to improving our on-time, on-budget performance. This is not to say that the former system of construction management at the residency level was flawed. Residency administration is pulled in so many directions that they could not focus on just the construction program in the way that we are now accomplishing this mission.”

- Zack Weddle, P.E., is an area construction engineer for Appomattox, Chatham and Halifax residencies in Lynchburg District. Earlier, he was assistant resident engineer in Halifax Residency.

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Page last modified: Feb. 23, 2007