By Michael Pearsall, P.Eng., CVS, CVM, FICE, FEC
I hope everyone enjoyed the last column, and how Robert Stewart and Greg Brink described their work on NCHRP 19-11 and the Value Management System Tool for Transportation Projects. Certainly this is a suite of tools that can help us all with our projects, but more importantly may encourage some expanded use of the methodology.
The exciting news this month is that, with your help, we have the opportunity to have a dedicated Transportation track at the SAVE International 2018 Value Summit. The call for papers is out and you should have noticed that one of the suggested focus areas is Value in Transportation. This is focused directly at the audience for this column.
Depending on the paper submissions we receive, this will likely start as a session or two on one day in 2018, but with the right interest it can easily grow to be an entire independent track at the 2019 Value Summit. We can’t replace the AASHTO VE conference in its entirety, but we can offer a great alternative with the right interest and participation.
This week I have been helping out our Road User Safety folks by facilitating completion of a FAST diagram and function characterizations to capture their entire motor vehicle inspection function. At this point I will admit, in the interest of full disclosure, that as a hands-on civil engineer, business process studies are my least favorite of all studies. However, it has been a good reminder that there are many different aspects to transportation that can be VE’d besides the standard capital projects we see so much of. Take a look around your organization and see what studies can be done outside your normal realm.
So, what exactly is the function of a Summit track? I have been pondering this one recently. Certainly there are components of “Share Information”, “Assemble Stakeholders” and “Showcase Methodology”. Having a dedicated Summit track creates opportunity as well. Take some time to consider what you consider the functions to be, what the basic function is and how you can help us maximize the opportunity we have for a dedicated Transportation Summit track.
Until the next issue, I would like to continue to encourage any transportation professional out there who would like to share their stories to contact me at mike.pearsall@ontario.ca.
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