Background And Purpose

The Work Zone Mobility and Safety Self Assessment (WZ SA) tool consists of a set of questions designed to assist those with work zone management responsibilities in assessing their programs, procedures, and practices against many of the good work zone practices in use today. The WZ SA process fulfills a number of important goals:

It helps raise the level of awareness of practices and strategies used in mitigating work zone congestion and crashes.
It facilitates communication and sharing of best practices among transportation professionals.
It serves as a working tool to identify gaps in existing efforts to mitigate work zone related congestion and crashes.
It provides an opportunity to benchmark progress at the agency-level, and provides information to the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) that can help in assessing the state of the practice in work zone management on a national basis.
It assists FHWA in measuring the effectiveness of its National Work Zone Program and shaping the future direction of that program.

FHWA conducts the assessment annually. In 2006, each FHWA Division Office was asked to re-examine and update the results of its 2005 WZ SA, working, as appropriate, with transportation agency staff from its state partner. Each Division Office had the option of performing a simple update or a more in-depth re-assessment. A simple update would focus on revising past scores to reflect current practices based on observations and an ongoing knowledge of work zone practices. A simple update might focus on particular areas of the WZ SA. For a more in-depth re-assessment, the WZ SA could be conducted as a group exercise and involve a structured discussion among stakeholders to develop consensus ratings for each of the questions.

While the score provides a metric for measurement, the most important information is derived from the discussions conducted among the participants. The interchange among stakeholders provides an opportunity for an agency to identify specific areas for improvement and provides the basis for structuring approaches to improve work zone policies, programs, and practices.

The WZSA is intended to help agencies identify areas of strength and areas for improvement and to then use that information to identify needs and gaps in practices that could benefit from additional focus. Techniques and strategies that will lead to filling those gaps in the project development process are key to improving work zone operations. While a goal of the WZ SA is to identify opportunities for improvement, the “next step” in making use of the information is to identify techniques and actions that can improve upon current operations.

The WZ SA consists of six primary assessment areas:

Section 1: Leadership and Policy
Section 2: Project Planning and Programming
Section 3: Project Design
Section 4: Project Construction and Operation
Section 5: Communications and Education
Section 6: Program Evaluation

Each assessment area contains a set of questions about a particular work zone related policy, process, product, or practice. For each question, respondents were asked to evaluate the extent to which a particular policy, process, product, or practice has been incorporated into an agency’s way of doing business. The questions in each section were rated according to the level of adoption phase, a scale of 0 to 15 broken into a set of five progressive levels based on the quality improvement process model used by industry. Definitions and characteristics for these ratings are listed in Table 1. A score of 7 or more on a question signifies that a state is implementing and executing the item in that question.

Table 1. WZSA Rating/Scoring Scale
Adoption Phase	Scoring Range	Description
Initiation	(0-3)	Does agency management acknowledge the need for a particular item? Has exploratory research taken place to assess the benefits of this item? Does management support further development of this item’s requirements?
Development	(4-6)	Has the agency developed a plan or approach to address the item’s requirements? Has the agency started to investigate the feasibility of implementation? Does the agency have standards and guidance to enable the item’s implementation? Does the agency have the approvals necessary for implementation? Are resources in place to support the adoption of this item?
Execution	(7-9)	Is the agency implementing/carrying out the requirements of this item? Has the agency allocated financial or staff resources necessary for the item’s execution? Have appropriate personnel been trained to execute the item’s requirements? Has a process owner been established?
Assessment	(10-12)	Has the agency assessed how well this item reduces work zone congestion and crashes? Has the agency assessed the process for carrying out this item? Has the agency implemented appropriate changes to the requirements of this item based on performance assessments?
Integration	(13-15)	Has the agency integrated the requirements of this item into quality improvement processes? Are the requirements of this item integrated into agency culture? Are the requirements of this item included as part of the employee performance rating system?

Several questions in the WZ SA are based on the magnitude of impact that a project may have on a particular area. These project types are described in Table 2.

Table 2. Project Types Used in the WZSA
Type	Characteristics	Examples
Type I	Affects the traveling public at the metropolitan, regional, intrastate, and possibly interstate level Very high level of public interest Directly affects a very large number of travelers Significant user cost impacts Very long duration	Central Artery/Tunnel in Boston, Massachusetts Woodrow Wilson Bridge in District of Columbia/Maryland/Virginia Springfield Interchange “Mixing Bowl” in Springfield, Virginia I-15 reconstruction in Salt Lake City, Utah
Type II	Affects the traveling public predominantly at the metropolitan and regional level Moderate to high level of public impact. Directly affects a moderate to high number of travelers Moderate to high user cost impacts Duration is moderate to long	Major corridor reconstruction High-impact interchange improvements Full closures on high-volume facilities Major bridge repair Repaving projects that require long term lane closures
Type III	Affects the traveling public at the metropolitan or regional level Low to moderate level of public impact Directly affects a low to moderate level of travelers Low to moderate user cost impacts May include lane closures for a moderate duration	Repaving work on roadways and the National Highway System (NHS) with moderate Average Daily Traffic (ADT) Minor bridge repair Shoulder repair and construction Minor interchange repairs
Type IV	Affects the traveling public to a small degree Low public impact Duration is short to moderate Work zones are usually mobile and typically recurring	Certain low-impact striping work Guardrail repair Minor shoulder repair Pothole patching Very minor joint sealing Minor bridge painting Sign repair Mowing

Note: These levels may not encompass all possible combinations or degrees of work zone categories. Some terms are general to allow flexibility in categorizing borderline project types.

previous | next