Transportation organizations throughout the nation are striving to become more efficient in delivering transportation services by using benchmarking as a tool for assessing performance. Benchmarking measures products and services within the organization or against peer organizations to bring about internal improvements. This paper describes one such study that was undertaken by the Maricopa County Department Transportation (MCDOT) in Arizona. The paper first describes the overall process that was designed to benchmark functions, products, and services both internally within MCDOT and externally against peer agencies. This process built upon the County's Managing for Results (MFR) process that measures goals and objectives. A MCDOT Profile is described that characterizes the organizational structure and major services. Business functions and the benchmark measures that were used to quantify performance are then described. Next, the paper discusses the method for collecting, quantifying, and analyzing the measures for each of the Department's seven divisions and related branches. The approach for surveying nine peer organizations in the states of California, Florida, Nevada, Oregon, and Washington follows with a comparison of results between MCDOT and the peer agencies. In addition, lessons learned from designing the benchmarking process, identifying and categorizing functions, collecting data on a regular basis, and surveying peer agencies are presented. The paper also presents recommendations for improving the process and incorporating the process into an organization's ongoing management.
Samenvatting