Business process modeling for a highway agency - a demonstration with planning and programming activities

Abstract

State transportation agencies depend on advancements in information technology to help manage the billions of dollars spent on thousands of construction projects every year. As transportation planning and programming become increasingly complex, communication among different divisions of the agencies is becoming even more important. This paper describes an effort to apply business process modeling to aid the integration of planning and programming of construction projects for a state transportation agency, metropolitan planning organizations, and related agencies. Business process models are developed according to the IDEF modeling standard that is used in Computer Associates AllFusion Process Modeler. IDEF modeling provides structured documentation about the processes of the agency while improving the transparency and validity of agency activities. Furthermore, IDEF modeling helps to determine bottlenecks in the current processes and supports the prioritization of investments in reengineering and associated information technologies. IDEF modeling enables employees at different levels of the agency to understand the business processes of their professional colleagues. Several lessons of the effort are as follows, (i) IDEF modeling can be translated efficiently to simulation models that provided increased detail of critical activities. (ii) The use of information technology is recommended to provide for real-time monitoring of selected planning and programming activities, (iii) Sources of risk to various agency activities need to be modeled explicitly by theoretical extension of the current IDEF methodology. Numerous examples and case studies are provided in the paper.