The Work Zone Mobility and Safety Self Assessment (WZ SA) tool consists of a set of questions designed to assist those with work zone management responsibilities in assessing their programs, procedures, and practices against many of the good work zone practices in use today. The WZ SA process fulfills a number of important goals: * It helps raise the level of awareness of practices and strategies used in mitigating work zone congestion and crashes. * It facilitates communication and sharing of best practices among transportation professionals. * It serves as a working tool to identify gaps in existing efforts to mitigate work zone related congestion and crashes. * It provides an opportunity to benchmark progress at the agency-level, and provides information to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) that can help in assessing the state of the practice in work zone management on a national basis. * It assists FHWA in measuring the effectiveness of its National Work Zone Program and shaping the future direction of that program. FHWA conducts the assessment annually. In 2006, each FHWA Division Office was asked to re-examine and update the results of its 2005 WZ SA, working, as appropriate, with transportation agency staff from its state partner. Each Division Office had the option of performing a simple update or a more in-depth re-assessment. A simple update would focus on revising past scores to reflect current practices based on observations and an ongoing knowledge of work zone practices. A simple update might focus on particular areas of the WZ SA. For a more in-depth re-assessment, the WZ SA could be conducted as a group exercise and involve a structured discussion among stakeholders to develop consensus ratings for each of the questions. While the score provides a metric for measurement, the most important information is derived from the discussions conducted among the participants. The interchange among stakeholders provides an opportunity for an agency to identify specific areas for improvement and provides the basis for structuring approaches to improve work zone policies, programs, and practices. The WZSA is intended to help agencies identify areas of strength and areas for improvement and to then use that information to identify needs and gaps in practices that could benefit from additional focus. Techniques and strategies that will lead to filling those gaps in the project development process are key to improving work zone operations. While a goal of the WZ SA is to identify opportunities for improvement, the “next step” in making use of the information is to identify techniques and actions that can improve upon current operations. (Author/publisher)
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