Determining the Maintenance Superintendent and Facility Needs for Residencies in the Virginia Department of Transportation

About the report:

In the spring of 2007, the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) began the process of reducing the number of superintendents and facilities dedicated to ordinary maintenance tasks.  The need to downsize was the direct result of the requirement in House Bill 667 passed by the Virginia General Assembly in the 2006 session to outsource all normal interstate maintenance.  The purpose of this study was to develop a procedure to assist VDOT in determining the number of superintendents needed to oversee and manage maintenance in each residency and the number of facilities needed to support their maintenance operations.

Current superintendent (Transportation Operations Manager II)) workloads were quantified and calculated for each VDOT residency based on a limited number of workload parameters and a workload boundary representing the maximum observed workload for any combination of the parameters.  Reductions in the number of superintendent positions were then made without exceeding the maximum current workloads for residencies. 

Deicing chemical storage capacity and maximum travel time to residency limits were determined to be the factors related to the number of necessary facilities.  The minimum number of facilities to be retained by each residency was determined using residency-specific data related to these two factors. 

The procedure for determining the appropriate number of area headquarters superintendents and maintenance facilities was presented to and accepted by Virginia’s Commonwealth Transportation Board in the fall of 2006.  Reductions in the numbers of superintendent positions and facilities began taking place in the spring of 2007.

Beginning with 213 superintendents at 207 maintenance area headquarters (AHQ) in 2006, the study presented in this report recommended a reduction of 35 superintendents, whereas the final plan issued by VDOT in 2007 called for a reduction of 32 superintendents.  Similarly, the study presented here recommended a reduction of 35 AHQ facilities, whereas the final plan issued by VDOT called for a reduction of 31 AHQ facilities.  The decisions leading to the differences between the recommended and effected reductions in superintendents and AHQ facilities, resulted from both public comment and internal VDOT comment and are beyond the scope of this study.

Authors