In 1998 the Federal Highway Administration's (FHWA's) Office of Program Quality Coordination conducted a quality improvement review entitled Meeting the Customer's Needs for Mobility and Safety During Construction and Maintenance Operations. Part of this review was the completion of a Work Zone Baseline Assessment Data Form by all FHWA field offices. The primary purpose of the Baseline Assessment Data Form was to provide the field offices with a tool to evaluate their past work zone activities, establish a baseline of their current state of the practice, and provide input for their future work zone quality improvement efforts. A second purpose of the baseline was to develop a summary of strengths, improvement opportunities, and obstacles to continuous quality improvement. The results of the baseline provided critical guidance and focus to the FHWA to support setting specific goals and objectives to provide tools (e.g., Quickzone, Work Zones Best Practices Guidebook, & Work Zone Website), and training (National Highway Institute courses and Work Zone workshops), to FHWA field offices and our state partners to help them accomplish their goals of reducing congestion and crashes due to work zones. FHWA has developed an updated version of the Work Zone Mobility and Safety Self Assessment tool that has been specifically constructed to reinforce, and build on, the 1998 assessment. This latest Self Assessment established a new work zone baseline to identify the gaps and successes that transportation agencies have had since the 1998 assessment. All of the strategies, policies, techniques, and tools identified in the Self Assessment were gathered from the best practices currently being done by state DOT's, Metropolitan Planning Organizations, and local municipalities. The Self Assessment survey contained of a number of questions designed to allow those with work zone management responsibilities to measure their program, procedures, and practices against many of the best practices in use today. This Self Assessment will serve three important roles: It will help raise the level of awareness of practices and strategies used in mitigating work zone congestion and crashes It will facilitate communication and sharing of best practices among transportation professionals It will serve as a working tool to identify areas of congestion and safety management strategies that need more investigation and performance evaluation.
Samenvatting