Data Integration
The Pennsylvania Experience
Was It Worth It?
Improved management decisions for a major transportation system such
as Pennsylvania's cannot be made without a comprehensive and coordinated
understanding of the infrastructure assets. Several factors make a
department-wide approach to Asset Management and data integration
attractive to PENNDOT:
- In Pennsylvania, aging infrastructure assets and growing transportation
needs place ever-increasing demands on the limited resources available
to maintain an efficient and safe network.
- The ability to predict asset needs and asset condition for various funding
levels and program policies (i.e., improvement versus preservation
versus maintenance) will be essential for strategic and tactical decisions.
- Competing needs across asset categories and among customers complicate
decisionmaking beyond the point where the simplistic analysis
approach of just a few years ago can still ensure good investment
strategies for the future.
- Development of shorter term plans to accomplish in-place, long-range
strategies will help PENNDOT avoid the inefficiencies of a reactive,
management-by-crisis approach.
- The credibility gained by consistent planning can improve customer
and partner buy-in for longer term goals.
If better Asset Management decisions can produce a marginal improvement
of only 1 percent in the efficiency of PENNDOT's capital spending
(such as achieving similar benefits using less resources), the agency could
save more than $28 million annually. More importantly, making poor
decisions could have disastrous results in terms of asset performance or in
the budgets needed to maintain minimum performance goals.