Work Zone Mobility and Safety Program
Table of Contents

Guidance for Conducting Effective Work Zone Process Reviews

Chapter 1. Introduction

PROCESS REVIEW BASICS

Federal regulations 23 CFR 630 Subpart J (the Work Zone Safety and Mobility Rule, established September 2004) require each state highway agency (SHA) to have a policy for the systematic consideration and management of work zone impacts on all Federal-aid projects. The policy should include state-level and project-level processes and procedures to address work zone impacts throughout the various stages of project development and implementation. Meanwhile, the updated Temporary Traffic Control Devices Rule (Subpart K, updated December 2007) calls for the increased focus on the consideration of positive protection use to improve worker and traveler safety, exposure control measures to reduce crash risk, and use of temporary traffic control devices above the minimum requirements to mitigate crash risk. This rule also requires SHAs to have a policy on the use of law enforcement personnel to enhance safety at work zones, and procedures outlining how payment for law enforcement usage in work zones will be handled.

One important activity included in the Work Zone Safety and Mobility Rule is a requirement that SHAs perform work zone process reviews every two years. Although the completion of process reviews is necessary to maintain compliance with the Rule, it is also an opportunity for a SHA to re-examine and take a holistic look at how well its work zone safety and mobility management practices are working. Long term, regular conduct of process reviews can lead to improvement in project delivery schedules, reduced capital and life-cycle costs, and better overall management of transportation operations in and around work zones.

A work zone process review should be a comprehensive evaluation of work zone management-related policies and procedures, the effectiveness of work zone impacts analyses and monitoring efforts, and ultimately, how well the SHA manages those impacts. The process review should help a SHA:

  • Verify that it remains compliant with existing regulations pertaining to work zone safety and mobility management;
  • Assess the effectiveness of improvements made in work zone safety and mobility management procedures since the prior process review cycle; and
  • Establish goals for further improvements to work zone management procedures, the results of which can then be tracked in future process review cycles.

Process reviews should cover an agency’s entire project development sequence, as well as maintenance operations. To do this, a multi-disciplinary team comprised of individuals from various divisions, field offices, and the FHWA Division Office is recommended. Both agency-level and project-level data should be examined as part of the review. Comprehensive details on how to conduct a work zone process review were previously developed and are available in FHWA’s Work Zone Performance Review Toolbox (see https://ops.fhwa.dot.gov/wz/prtoolbox/wzpr.htm). The intent of this document is to share good practices and methods that agencies have found worthwhile in conducting their process reviews, and lead to more consistent and targeted improvements in SHA work zone policies and procedures across the country.

Process reviews that cover an agency’s entire project development process, as well as maintenance operations, can lead to improvement in project delivery schedules, reduced capital and life-cycle costs, and better overall management of transportation operations in and around work zones.

PROCESS REVIEW EXPERIENCES

Over the past several years, experiences with process reviews have varied from agency to agency. Some agencies have found their process review effort to be extremely revealing and positive. In these cases, the reviews served as important motivation to assess what practices and procedures were, and what were not, effective relative to work zone safety and mobility management. As shown in the example box below, these agencies identified and implemented a number of positive changes in their work zone policies and procedures based on the results of their process reviews.

Examples of Agency Policy and Procedure Improvements Identified through Recent Process Reviews

  • Several agencies found that many of their staff were not aware of their work zone safety and mobility policy, and so updates to the project development process manual (with hyperlinks to the policy and implementation guidelines) was identified as an action item.
  • One agency found that they did not have a process in place to “close the loop” between construction staff and traffic control designers after a project was completed, and so the agency began to encourage close-out meetings between these staff to share lessons learned and determine ways to improve future work zone plans.
  • One agency determined that although work zone crash data were available electronically within a few days of the crash occurring, few agency staff knew about it or accessed it regularly to monitor safety conditions at a project or for multiple-project agency-level assessments. The need to establish procedures and a schedule for analyzing work zone crash data was included as a process review action item.

On the other hand, some agencies have experienced challenges in conducting their process reviews and/or with using the results of their reviews to make meaningful improvements to their work zone safety and mobility policies and procedures. Generally speaking, common reasons for these challenges include:

  • A lack of upper management support for the process review effort, which has led to 1) a lack of participation by one or more agency divisions or offices, 2) a lack of time and labor allocated for those performing the review, and 3) an inability to approve and implement any changes to agency procedures identified by the review;
  • A perception that the process review needs to be separate of other agency initiatives to improve work zone safety and mobility management, and is thus additional work without additional benefits to the agency;
  • A perception that project inspections and traffic control compliance field reviews being done by the agency are sufficient as a process review, which has limited agency consideration of a broader range of potential improvements in policies, procedures, training, etc.

Overall, agencies have considerable flexibility in determining how to construct and conduct their process reviews. This flexibility is necessary given the many different agency organizational structures, regional roadway and traffic characteristics, and work zone issues that can arise. However, such flexibility can also make the process review daunting to agency staff. Many topics could be included in a process review, and multiple sub-questions could be generated under each topic that an agency could also consider. Certainly, it is not realistic for an agency to attempt to cover all topics within a single process review. At the same time, it can be difficult for an agency to decide where to focus its attention for a given process review. This can be particularly challenging after an agency has performed one or two such reviews, and has “picked the low-hanging fruit” in terms of making work zone safety and mobility policy and procedure improvements.

One of the purposes of this document is to provide additional guidance for agencies to define what form their process reviews should take; what topics/questions they should focus on for the review, whether other questions and topics should be included, and how to structure the review in a manner that will yield improvements in its work zone policies and procedures. In addition to contributing to the national evolution of work zone management state of the practice, process reviews should convey real, lasting value to every agency that makes them a priority.

CONTENTS OF THIS GUIDANCE

This document is divided into the following main sections:

  • Work Zone Process Reviews: Tips for Success
  • Effective Use of Data and Performance Measures in Process Reviews
  • Connecting Process Reviews with Other Work Zone Safety and Mobility Improvement Efforts

Examination of successful process reviews has uncovered several useful concepts and approaches taken by various SHAs, which are summarized in the first section.

Next, because the Work Zone Rule emphasizes the use of data as part of the process review, this document stresses the importance of establishing and continuously monitoring meaningful work zone safety and mobility performance metrics. Examples are provided of several outcome-based measures and data that agencies can use to verify that previous improvements to work zone safety and mobility management procedures have worked, and to help identify other procedures that may need to be enhanced in order to achieve additional performance improvements.

Finally, process reviews are only one of several methods available to assist agencies striving to improve their work zone safety and mobility policies and procedures. The results of some of those methods can be coordinated with process reviews in order to yield synergistic benefits. These opportunities are described in the last section of this document.

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