Public Works Maintains Your Roads, Bridges, and Sidewalks; Document Management Maintains Their Records

The Public Works Department of Hillsborough County, Florida provides and manages safe, efficient, and environmentally sensitive transportation and storm water systems to satisfy diverse mobility needs and to provide flood protection to public lands.  It was the first county in Florida to receive national accreditation by the American Public Works Association for services with the utmost efficiency, cost effectiveness and quality.

Problem

Unlike many departments within a county, the Public Works staff is constantly out in the field.  They build and maintain signs, signals, roads and bridges.  While every department in a county has paperwork, the Public Works department has paperwork handled by people who are always on the move.  That adds to the complexity for getting the job done.

Two pressing issues for the department were the timely and efficient response to new construction or maintenance requests and the effective use of vendors who hold blanket purchase contracts for providing services.  Both of these issues had the same basic requirement: getting the initial request in and then routing the request through the varied approval processes.
 
For example, to install a new traffic light, the process starts with the request to the Traffic Services division.  That request is checked against the existing project list.  Engineering and design are notified, and they conduct a study to determine what is needed and how much it will cost which in itself is a multi-step process.  Once the analysis is done, and approved, a work order is created and assigned for construction.  As a manual process, this requires that paper be sent, copied and faxed.  This type of manual process can add weeks, if not months, to getting a new light installed.  Part of the issue is that the paper needs to be routed to different people in diverse locations during the process.

Document Management Solution

By automating the intake and routing of documents from requests to work orders, all time lost due to routing is eliminated.  This is true for everything from requesting a new traffic light to assigning a contractor to perform work using a blanket contract.

Today, the Public Works department concentrates on their mission rather than on the routing and finding of documents.  When a request is entered into the system, it immediately is routed to the correct person in the process.

Take for example the process of requesting that a vendor be assigned to perform work under a blanket contract.  Before automation, the request was faxed or mailed from a project manager to a section manager for review.  The documents sent had to have not only the request, but also the supporting documents.  With mail, and even with fax, there is always the delay caused by not receiving the documents.  Further, if supporting documents are missing or incorrect, there is another delay while this is resolved.  Now the documents are input directly into the system and immediately routed to a section manager.  If clarification is needed, the system can route the documents back to the project manager.  This one simple step can take days off of a request, and this is only the beginning of the process.

After the section manager approves the request, the accounting team verifies everything from the budget to the blanket contract.  They also ensure that there are no stipulations requiring the rotation of vendors.  Again, this has been dramatically improved through automated routing.  Once the accounting team approves the request, it is automatically routed to the Department Director for final approval.  With that approval, a work order is generated and sent back to the requestor so they can route it back to the appropriate vendor.

Now the department has the ability to track all of their requests without relying on manual methods.  It does not matter if it is a request for a new sign or a request for a vendor to perform maintenance; the processes have been automated and hence improved.

With automation comes transparency of process, accountability and vastly improved communication.  No one wonders where a request is anymore.  They have immediate access to determine the status.