Current and Proposed Organizational Activities

ERP Project – After 3 intense weeks of on-site investigations of CGI-AMS, Oracle/PeopleSoft, and SAP implementations at 7 different DOTs across the nation, the new State Chief Information Officer and the Executive Steering Committee has decided to go out for an RFP to acquire an ERP solution rather than to automatically continue with the SAP solution. SAP HR has been implemented for the entire state and SAP Payroll has been implemented for all agencies except DOTD. The imminent DOTD SAP Payroll RFP has been withdrawn. DOTD was the only non-Division Of Administration agency invited to attend this investigation due in part to the previous efforts to obtain a best-of-breed Maintenance Management System and also to its unique requirements of Federal Aid billing.

Process Improvement – Executive Management embarked on a department wide process improvement initiative at DOTD. The initial focus, phase 1, has been a process review of all major functional areas. Phase 2, has begun and major areas that could not be address in Phase 1 are being addressed. The long term goal is to imbed the culture of process improvement throughout the agency for all operations and processes.

District Reorganization – Executive Management is currently reorganizing the District offices and going to an Area Engineer concept. This will eliminate district wide positions like the Construction Engineer and Maintenance Engineer. The major organizational structure has just been completed. The next phase of this effort will focus on all other existing positions which will be reviewed for elimination or redefinition. Some district consolidation may result from this effort.

Infrastructure

Emergency Management Center – While a statewide multi-agency EMC has been operating during hurricanes for a number of years, the recent catastrophic storms of both Rita and Katrina has resulted in the creation of a separate DOTD EMC. The enormous staging and management requirements overwhelmed the available operational space of the multi-agency center and did not allow DOTD to engage the necessary resources in the most efficient manner. The DOTD EMC will allow DOTD to marshal all of its resources towards the safety and protection of the state’s citizens and assets. The efforts of our fiber technology group and now our ITS group have significantly improved the capabilities of both of these Emergency Management Centers.

Video Conferencing - The statewide implementation of Tandberg video conferencing equipment is being used more and more and is in high demand for training purposes. The implementation is deployed to our district headquarters offices over our internal fiber network. All of the fiber acquired for this network was acquired as reimbursement for access to our Interstate ROW by fiber companies. Our video conferencing equipment was functional, on generator power, immediately after Katrina and was the sole communication mechanism for a considerable time after the storm.

Intelligent Transportation System - Our fiber technology group, telcom group, and intelligent transportation group have all been consolidated under the ITS operation. This group is now aggressively placing multimode fiber to supplement our single mode long haul fiber. Cameras are being installed statewide for traffic monitoring and dispatch. Our ITS installations in the Baton Rouge area have been the most aggressive and the local traffic management center is actively using these deployments to mitigate traffic matters. The link to the page with the cameras is shown here. http://www.dotd.louisiana.gov/press/traffic_cameras/traffic.asp

VoIP - Rita and Katrina have resulted in long term destruction of local phone systems in the southern parts of the state. Bell South has indicated that our New Orleans Design office would not receive phone service again for at least a year. We were able to video conference with our District offices over our network as soon as the generators were brought online the day after Katrina hit. As a result we have procured Voice over IP phones to operate in these areas. Our network deployment only needed minor equipment additions. Some of the approximately 30 phones purchased will be installed in offices while others will be deployed on an as needed basis following an emergency. It is our intention to pursue VoIP for the remainder of the districts.

LONI - The Louisiana Optical Network Initiative, or LONI, is a fiber optics network that connects supercomputers at Louisiana’s major research universities, allowing computation speeds more than 1000 times the rate previously possible, and transforming the research capability of Louisiana’s educational institutions. The LONI network will connect to the National LambdaRail (NLR), a consortium of leading U.S. research universities and private sector technology companies, deployment of a nationwide advanced optical, Ethernet and IP networking network infrastructure on more than 15,000 miles of fiber optic cable across the United States. DOTD provided the majority of the long haul single mode fiber used by LONI.


New Applications (Just Completed, In Progress, or Preparing to Start)

AASHTO Site Manager – This implementation continues. New projects must use this system. Some deployment and policy issues are still being resolved.

Data Warehouse – The just completed project was designed to create a repository of information to generate reports to answer information needs. Analytical reports are classified by functional groups on tabs. These reports are based on weekly snapshots of DOTD summarized data from various production systems. The reports provide a means to analyze trends over time, and to easily review project costs and fund balances.

Plans Management and Distribution –Our efforts to implement “Electronic Publishing” have led to electronic standards that ensure consistent CAD drawing characteristics and printing results. Our Plans Management Committee laid the groundwork for printing, in-process and e-publishing software platform selection. A recent Process Improvement task team had a mandate of developing a plan of action and bringing this effort to a successful conclusion. Currently the task team and IT are executing the plan. The final workflow will result in certified electronic drawings that are completed using DOTD CAD Standards by both consultants and internal design staff. Some of the components include Plans Publishing - Falcon SVP; Online Indexing - Falcon/DMS & Falcon Indexer; Offline Indexing - Altiva ControlCAD Indexer; Drawing Reader - Adobe Acrobat Reader, and CADD Drawing Management and GIS Integration – Bentley ProjectWise. Most of the workflow is in place and functioning. Océ TDS 800’s plotters are used for printing at DOTD.

Bar Code – We are about to implement bar code data capture on our ROW permit forms. Many permit applicants complete on-line permit forms and print them for signature. These forms are submitted to our district permit offices where permit clerks then have to “key punch” the permit form into our permit application database. While our long term goal is to implement a web enabled permit form that will capture this data as the permit is created, we are modifying our existing forms to generate bar codes of the data entered by the customer. The permit clerk will then simply scan the bar code to capture the data entered by the customer and eliminate the “key punch” requirements. We are currently testing the forms.

In-Vehicle Data Capture – This project was designed to capture both hour meters and odometer reading from vehicles electronically using wireless technology. The vendor has successful functioning equipment in the golf course maintenance industry, especially Toro equipment; however, the vendor’s wireless hour meter equipment could not be made to function properly in the various DOTD heavy equipment items that were tested. The failure prevented the In-Vehicle odometer equipment from being installed and tested. This project had a limited experimental budget and funds did not allow for a detailed investigation of the failure mechanism.

Record of Exchange


Information Wanted

Construction Machine Guidance Control – any and all information requested