Transforming FHWA's Workforce

As part of FHWA's commitment to the success of our customers, the agency must maintain employee expertise in key areas. This past year, OTS played a key role strengthening learning and development opportunities and ensuring the technical skills of FHWA staff members kept pace with changes in the transportation industry. For more than a decade, FHWA's Discipline Support System (DSS) has been the organizational framework through which the agency develops high levels of expertise in more than 20 technical disciplines. The DSS provides strategic direction and leadership, develops learning and networking resources and strengthens collaboration, coordination, and professional development opportunities within and across FHWA's disciplines.

Discipline Seminars Deliver Technical Learning and Professional Development

In 2018, FHWA staff in 15 disciplines attended multi-day Learning and Development seminars. OTS staff were integral in bringing these seminars to fruition – on both the programmatic and technical sides.

read more

The DSS is More than Seminars

While the Learning and Development seminars are an integral part of ensuring FHWA specialists are ready to serve our customers, there's much more to the Discipline Support System than just seminars.

read more

Discipline Seminars Deliver Technical Learning and Professional Development

In 2018, FHWA staff in 15 disciplines attended multi-day Learning and Development seminars. OTS staff were integral in bringing these seminars to fruition – on both the programmatic and technical sides.

Timeline showing 2018 FHWA Discipline Seminars. January: Planning, Air Quality, and Freight. February: Administrative and Support Services and Civil Rights. May: Environment and Realty. June: Structures. July: Human Resources. August: Geotech; Safety; Pavement and Materials; Hydraulics. October: Information Technology. November: Acquisitions.

The KM unit planned, organized and managed the seminar program. Most of the seminars were single-discipline focused, while others combined more than one discipline to help bridge similar technical areas and encourage collaboration across related disciplines. These in-person conferences provided in-depth technical training, career development and professional skills building to more than 1,100 FHWA employees. In their project management role, KM staff refocused the seminar program to provide smooth operations and more successful delivery of training. KM specialists designed budget and program plans for each seminar; researched and contracted venues; handled registration, logistics, and communications; provided onsite management; created legacy capture videos; conducted evaluations; and ensured that FHWA employees attending the seminars could take advantage of the best possible learning environment.

For eight of the Learning and Development Seminars, RC specialists led the development of training materials and technical content—at times partnering with FHWA staff in HQ Program Offices, Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center, Federal Lands Highway and Divisions. As champions for many of the agency’s individual disciplines, RC leadership provided the framework and strategic direction for the topics addressed at each seminar. RC specialists then developed tailored training material, interactive approaches, hands-on exercises and “flipped” learning approaches (in several cases). Many RC teams also worked diligently to improve the content and approach for the seminar’s training materials based on participant feedback from prior L&D sessions. This included a dedicated focus on developing training content that was at least at an intermediate level of training and offered significant time for peer dialogue. At the seminars, RC staff delivered and facilitated more than 70 training sessions, with noteworthy instructor scores. RC teams also led the development, dissemination and analysis of evaluations for specific technical tracks at each seminar. This information, combined with other participant feedback, is now being used to prioritize specific professional capacity building strategies that each discipline will undertake in coming years.

Graphic entitled: "OTS Drives 2018 Discipline Seminars." 12 Discipline seminars resulted in Seminar program Management, Learning and Development, and Outcomes. The Seminar Program Management produced increased seminar efficiens, tailored oversight, and onsite management. The Learning and Development included 200+ technical sessions, instructional design support, and 42 coporate/agency initiative sessions. The Outcomes include: 95% seminar satisfaction rate; 87% technical content relevance ; 95% felt more engaged; 1,105 employees trained; and 15 diciplines reached.

Participant evaluations showed that the seminars were highly successful, and that attendees were better equipped to do their jobs after attending the seminar. More than 95% of attendees were satisfied or extremely satisfied with their seminar, and 87% indicated the material covered in the seminar sessions would help them do their jobs.


FHWA Executive Director Tom Everett addresses the IT discipline seminar,
October 2018, Arlington, VA


Structures discipline seminar,
June 2018, Annapolis, MD


Human Resources
discipline seminar,
July 2018, Annapolis, MD


Jagan Gudimettla, consultant, conducts tour of the mobile concrete lab
at the Pavements and Materials discipline seminar,
August 2018, in Ellicott City, MD


FHWA mobile concrete lab at the
Pavements and Materials discipline seminar,
August 2018, in Ellicott City, MD

The DSS is More than Seminars

While the Learning and Development seminars are an integral part of ensuring FHWA specialists are ready to serve our customers, there’s much more to the Discipline Support System than just seminars. The DSS provides all employees a ready resource to learn and grow in their disciplines, while ensuring that FHWA staff is properly skilled and equipped to serve our customers. Throughout the year, FHWA’s 22 active disciplines hold webinars, do peer assessments, examine and measure their competencies, create succession plans, develop learning and development strategies, and hold virtual training activities for their memberships. All OTS units work to sustain the DSS and support the individual disciplines within the system.

RC staff are at the core of advancing the disciplines through multiple channels. Beyond playing a key role in the Learning and Development Seminars, the RC Team Managers and Specialists actively lead and participate in discipline activities to exchange knowledge and strengthen working relationships. Some serve as discipline champions or co-champions, and many are members of the Discipline Council.

The RC’s customer service model promotes collaboration and outreach – sharing new ideas, practices, and innovations. These activities are at the heart of the DSS. RC teams support the disciplines in a wide variety of activities, including:

  • Recruitment and onboarding.
  • Mentoring programs.
  • Training workshops.
  • Boot camps and Web-based toolkits.
  • Web conferences.
  • Discipline-based award and recognition programs.
  • Technical assistance.

Together, these DSS priorities help ensure that FHWA staff are well positioned to serve our customers long into the future. Looking forward into 2019, the individual disciplines will continue to define their specific priorities and strategies to achieve these goals. While these strategies will vary by individual discipline, examples include:

  • Continuing development of discipline specific topical boot camp.
  • Launching or updating of recurring webinar training series.
  • Establishing or continuing regional networking forums.
  • Updating discipline SharePoint sites.
  • Developing or enhancing discipline specific onboarding or “welcome” processes.
  • Reviewing professional competencies and core functions.

RC leadership and specialists also are committed to bringing an organized discipline approach to critical FHWA program areas that cross-cut traditional agency staffing structures, such as asset management and transportation performance management.

While the RC focuses on leading efforts of the individual disciplines, the KM unit takes a holistic approach to promote collaboration across disciplines, and ensure discipline-based knowledge is readily available and findable. Both the KM unit and the RC help lead the Discipline Council – a committee comprised of discipline champions set up to help ensure consistency across the DSS and promote agency wide efforts. KM is helping the disciplines find new ways to collaborate and share ideas, and also exploring new uses for existing technologies to promote that collaboration. The KM team works with their partners in Information Technology to identify and pilot new technologies for collaboration, information sharing, and virtual teaming across all FHWA disciplines. The KM unit is also the home of the iExchange, a multi-generational forum of FHWA employees that discusses topics of interest to the disciplines and works on projects important to the agency. Open to all employees, the iExchange holds quarterly crowdsourcing webinars to stimulate creative discussion on and solutions to a wide variety of challenges. The popularity of these quarterly iExchange webinars has grown, and in 2018 there are approximately 161 employee members. At the close of 2018, the KM unit was also exploring new networks for employees, including a discipline-based onboarding program for new FHWA entrants.