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Caltrans
Caltrans Finds Smooth Driving
Caltrans' North Region, which encompasses twenty-two
counties and 4,300 centerline miles of state highways, had trouble
keeping track of all its projects. Data was tucked away in
mainframe systems dating from the ‘60s and ‘70s
or project workplans scheduled with XPM (Expert Project Manager) to
which only project schedulers had direct access. The XPM
system—still in use today—was strong in some
realms but lacked an effective front end for viewing its data.
Michael A. Scott, North Region Program Project Management, compares
XPM to a television without a picture tube. 'It's
great if you're inside the TV receiving the data directly,
but for the 99.9 percent of us outside, it's about as user
friendly as stubbing your toe.'
Project data was made available to Project and Functional Managers
in the form of hundreds of printed reports every month. Regardless
of the report format or mode of delivery, the reports generated
little feedback from the Functional Managers. As a result, the data
in the XPM scheduling files and on the mainframe wasn't in
synch with what was being done in the real world.
Initial Beginnings
Every Caltrans project has a Workplan consisting of who will do
what, where, and within what timeframe. These Workplans are fully
resourced project schedules for work planned and needed to be
updated with the current status of work accomplished and resources
expended as well as other project data stored in various databases.
The initial solution, conceptualized in 1996 by North Region XPM
Administrator Kim Schutz and developed in 1997 by Landscape
Architect and FileMaker whiz Stephen Reader, involved manually
importing the workplan data from XPM into FileMaker with
calculations used to extract data from other sources as well.
Although the system worked at first, everything fell apart when it
came time to add updated XPM data. 'Two weeks
later,' Scott groans, 'when you needed to update
it, it was like pulling teeth.'
Early in 1998, upper management decided it was time to put the
cross-platform database tool FileMaker Pro, on everyone's
desktop and use it to interface automatically with XPM data. The
goal was to enable people in the field—not just project
managers—to easily find out what work was assigned to
them, how many hours they had to do it, and how many hours
they'd already charged to date. They also wanted people to
be able to see who else was working on the project and what those
people were responsible for completing. It also had to be fully
functional on either a Mac or PC.
Although people were finally able to access the data from their
desktops, the complex calculations and amount of data was stored in
one flat file that was so huge (700MB) that 'you'd
sit there and watch it spit up one line of data every couple of
seconds,' as Scott laments. The data was online, but it
still wasn't user friendly enough. In fact, nobody could
use it.
The situation improved when, at the beginning of 1998, Management
formed a Workplan Status Team, combining five people with varied
skills into an innovative powerhouse - Steven Reader, Kim Schutz,
Michael Scott, Wendy Wilson, and Tim Morris. Given the challenge of
fixing the system, Scott, a longtime FileMaker fan, began
converting the one file into 15 to 20 related files, the largest of
which was 30 MB. That was a Friday afternoon in April 1998. By
Monday morning, he had a fully functional system. Since then it has
expanded and has four components: a workplan statusing tool that
produces accurate project workplans and workplan agreements, an
assignment database for division managers to assign projects, a
project initiation database for program advisors, and a reporting
database that produces standard reports and project summaries for
Functional Managers. To date, there are approximately 500 copies of
FileMaker running throughout the North Region.
How Complex is Complex?
Caltrans projects are broken down into 564 different
codes—the first is concept, the last is contract
acceptance. Projects range in duration from five hours to 34 years.
Each functional group working on the project is assigned a number.
In the North Region alone, there are approximately 160 different
functional units, plus another 130 in the engineering service
center. If all of the North Region's 300 units are working
on it, you multiply those 300 units times the 564 project
codes—giving you 169,200 for one project alone.
'Then you multiply that times a thousand projects,'
Scott explains. 'It gets really complicated in a
hurry.' With FileMaker as the front end, all the system
complexity is completely hidden from end users. They open one file,
use one password, and have instant access to data from between 60
and 80 different files located in FileMaker, XPM, and mainframe
databases. 'The reason what we're doing is
working,' explains Scott, 'is because it was
developed from the bottom up using the tool that's on your
desktop. It's the first tool that people have had that lets
them get all the data they want.'
Empowered Workers
The Workplan Status program has certainly generated a lot of
interest among its users. People have taken ownership of their data
now that they can finally see what it is. Moreover, the people
doing the work have a say in what numbers the project managers
generate; previously, the two groups operated almost autonomously.
'Basically,' Scott says proudly, 'we now
have two-way communication, whereas before we didn't have
any.' Now that everybody can get into the system from their
desktop, they can eliminate discrepancies between management goals
and realistic projections.
The system works so well that other Caltrans regions are looking
to implement it as well. Original estimates were that it would cost
$1.7 million and take until March of 2000 to get the same system up
and running in another region. However, Scott's team has
been able to reduce that estimate considerably. They can load an
entire region's data onto their servers in two days and
have the staff trained and files fully converted within a month.
The system's success might not be immediately evident to
the average California taxpayer. People might still be slowed by
those telltale Caltrans orange cones and the occasional blocked
lane. But now that the North Region's right hand knows what
the left hand is doing, you can rest assured that critical
roadways, bridges, and overpasses are maintained with greater
precision and efficiency than ever before.
Filemaker Contact:
Kevin Mallon
Public Relations Manager
FileMaker Inc.
408-987-7227
kevin_mallon@filemaker.com
http://www.filemaker.com
- It's up to California's Department of Transportation (Caltrans) to keep traffic rolling in California -- a big job, since California has one of the largest transportation infrastructures in the United States. The job is simplified now that FileMaker Pro is in the driver's seat at Caltrans, tracking hundreds of projects ranging from maintaining highways to seismic retrofitting of bridges.
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