Obtaining Local Input
Project managers are seeking earlier involvement from the regional planning commissions, towns, and stakeholders to gather as much information as possible about site conditions and community concerns to create a culture of collaboration, ensure productive working relationships and minimize impacts due to short term road closures such as avoiding road closures during the school season, holidays, and important town events. We strive to exceed our customers’ expectations throughout the project delivery process by communicating early and often through community questionnaires, public meetings, and project factsheets.
Setting the Stage for Success
To aid with the successful delivery of projects, the Project Initiation and Innovation Team (PIIT) vetted various initiatives to identify and remove impediments to project delivery including the development of traffic management plans, public involvement plans and risk registries. These documents are updated at each plan milestone during the design process and handed off to construction following procurement, promoting consistency and enhanced communication with an emphasis on removing barriers throughout the life of a bridge project.
Acquiring Early Support for the Recommended Alternative
A collaboration phase was added to the project initiation process to ensure that all key stakeholders have an opportunity to provide valuable feedback on the recommended preferred alternative. Collaboration meetings provide an opportunity for project managers, designers and resource groups, such as Environmental, Utilities and Right-of-Way Sections, to engage in meaningful dialog and brainstorm the best approaches to expedite project delivery, minimize project impacts, and impacts to the traveling public while delivering a quality project. Heightened coordination with these resource groups continues into the design phase to ensure projects are delivered on time and on budget.
Ensuring Quality Customer Service
Scoping engineers recently integrated an electronic audience response system to poll the public, town officials and other key stakeholders during Regional Concerns and Preferred Alternative Presentations. Questions are posed throughout the presentations to engage the audience on various topics ranging from demographics, the preferred length and timing of proposed bridge closures, areas of concerns, and overall satisfaction with the recommend scope. All responses are used to help refine the project scope. Our customers can view these survey results and all other pertinent information a public SharePoint site throughout the life of the project including the scoping reports, milestone plan sets, and project factsheets.
For more information: http://vtransparency.vermont.gov/index.html.