Recipe for Success
By James "Bo" Sanchez, P.E.
Program Manager, Turnpike Division

Continual business process improvements are critical to an organization’s success. Here’s how one organization’s scrupulous analysis, visualization, and execution is making a difference.

An organization’s greatest asset is its business process knowledge. Consider, for example, the five-star restaurant. Its collection of signature recipes represents the finest ingredients, exacting preparation, and artful arrangement on the plate. Combined with the graceful serving style of staff, these recipes have created a name for the establishment in the dining marketplace. But diners’ preferences change, and the savvy chef knows that new dishes must periodically enliven the menu if the restaurant is to stay competitive.

Over the past two years, Florida’s Turnpike Enterprise (FTE) has documented its own “recipes” for success. The 2002 state legislation that changed Florida’s primary toll road operator from a Department of Transportation District to an “Enterprise” allowed the organization to apply private-sector best business practices. Now, like the innovative chef, the organization is scrutinizing every ingredient and process, with the intent of continuing its efforts to improve the services it has delivered to the state of Florida since 1957.

Specifically, two departments within FTE—Planning and Production, and Finance—have been the focus of this effort to analyze core business processes, how the business process is executed, interactions among organizations, and the level of quality and service provided to FTE customers.

Planning, Production, and Process

One of FTE’s four primary goals is “effective and efficient project delivery.” In 2004, FTE’s Planning and Production Department embarked upon the largest capital program in the history of the nearly 50-year-old Florida’s Turnpike. The $4.7-billion work program includes bonding for roughly $2 billion in widening and capacity expansion projects, such as more than 100 new lanes and state-of-the-art electronic equipment for toll collection.

The business process improvement effort involves hundreds of interactions between internal departments and external organizations and subcontractors. Eliminating nonvalue-added activities and redundancies and improving process performance and quality have the potential for saving millions in costs.

Finance and Function

Another of FTE’s four primary goals is “a fully leveraged and financially sound transportation asset for Florida.” Similar to the Planning and Production Department, FTE’s Department of Finance wanted to find additional efficiencies in its work, but felt capturing the wealth of knowledge contained in its senior leadership team was also a priority. The process took on an additional imperative: capture and document vital knowledge for future posterity.

Maps and Metrics

PBS&J worked closely with staff from each department to understand and detail the intricacies of its work processes. This information was synthesized into multiple levels of detail, the highest level view being a business interaction diagram, which shows how each department interacts with other FTE departments, state and federal government, the public, and local and city organizations.

A Core Business Process Diagram provides the next level of detail for each main item on the Interaction Diagram. It provides an overview—in the form of a series of flowcharts and text—of what each department does. A senior executive, for instance, could use the Core Business Process Diagram to explain the department’s objectives and responsibilities.

An Activities and Deliverables Diagram bores down even deeper to specific steps, or activities, that are taken to perform the items outlined on the Core Business Process Diagram. This level of detail provides guidance for business process execution as well as measurable details for efficiency, performance, and quality metrics. It is here that new employees, for instance, would look to understand the “who, what, when, where, and why” of their organization, thereby reducing the natural learning curve.

Test and Taste

The saying goes, The proof is in the pudding. In the world of cuisine, however, every chef knows the real verdict comes in the eating. And it’s the process of putting the diagrams together and analyzing them that serves as FTE’s Department of Planning and Production’s ultimate taste test.

“Once we saw a clear representation of all of the steps and data flow involved in our work, we were immediately able to make some changes,” says Nancy Clements, P.E., Director of Planning and Production for FTE. “For example, we realized that there was some overlap between reports generated from our planning group and our engineering group. We consolidated the reports, and, in the process, eliminated the redundancy.”

Continues Clements, “We were also able to more clearly visualize the flow of information from one group to another. As we continue to work with the maps, we are finding, in some instances, that too much information is being generated, and in others, too little information transmitted. This fine-tuning has definitely streamlined our work.”

Stir and Savor

When FTE transitioned from a division of the Florida Department of Transportation into the Enterprise, it brought many of the department’s governing statutes, regulations, and procedures along with it—particularly those related to finance and contracting.

“We were given the latitude, though, to adopt or refine these regulations while staying within their boundaries as we see fit,” says William Thorp, CPA, CGFM, and chief financial officer for FTE. “Our senior leadership team knows the rules and regulations by heart. They also have a keen insight into the gray areas that give us some flexibility.

“We’re now capturing that knowledge and insight in a more systematic way,” Thorp continues. “Thus, the Department of Finance is taking the business process analysis to the next level. We’re documenting—via a web-based, searchable database—every procedure, statute, and regulation that pertains to or has exception from governance over the business process.”

James “Bo” Sanchez, P.E., is a program manager in PBS&J’s Turnpike Division.