Ann M. BrachAASHTO Research Advisory Committee Annual Meeting

July 22, 2014

Accelerating solutions for highway safety, renewal, reliability, and capacity

Thoughts on Implementation from the Research Side

Key Messages

• SHRP 2’s focus on strategic objectives—real-world needs—drove the research agenda

• Implementation is very context-dependent and contact-intensive

• Invest time and money in “development”

• Brace yourself for the “transition”

• Thoughts about creating a “culture of innovation”

SHRP 2 Strategic Objectives• Needs identified by State DOT and industry leaders

—driven by customer-oriented goals:

– Make highways safer: revolutionary change– Fix highways: address epidemic of aging infrastructure– Reduce congestion: increase physical and operational

capacity

• Objectives formed and guided decisions:– As resources decreased or increased– As results of earlier projects produced new information– As external circumstances changed

The Importance of Context• Implementation must account for the economic,

cultural, institutional, political, and technological context in which the innovation will be introduced– Political, institutional issues for Capacity area

– Rapid construction techniques must address shifts in risk, effects on workers, etc.

• Sometimes the innovation is in the context itself: incremental improvements “plug in” to the context—step function improvements may be disruptive– Reliability work on business practices and phased

approach to creating an operations-focused agency

– Can use “pieces” of each focus area’s work or embrace systemic vision embodied in the focus area’s objective

The Importance of “Contact”• Contact with people: potential users need to trust the

person promoting an innovation; the greater the risk, the more trust there needs to be

– State DOT leaders spearheading implementation efforts

– Lead state, peer exchange approaches

• Contact with the innovation: implementation is more empirical than theoretical: potential users need to see the innovation in use, handle it, test it themselves

– Pilot/demonstration projects (Renewal, Reliability, Capacity)

– Workshops focused on using the project (Safety)

• Travel is essential—you have to talk to people, see things

Development• Can take time

• Can cost several times more than the research

• Perceived as less creative (requires a different kind of creativity)

• Not well-suited to press releases

• Shows up weak points of the research results

• Requires confronting realities that may contradict original beliefs or circumstances

• Everyone thinks it is someone else’s job

• BUT, is needed to address context and people

7

The Transition• Be prepared for chaos and discomfort— be

resilient and open to new perspectives

• No matter how well users are represented during the R&D stage you will still have a large new audience to bring up to speed— see it as an opportunity to communicate

• Not-invented-here syndrome, institutional politics, the lure of resources, fear of failure or criticism, risk aversion, territorialism ... We must be doing something right— be patient until they see that innovation won’t hurt them.

Culture of Innovation• Respect the learning (R&D) process:

– Put your best people in R&D management

– Be grateful that they “sweat the details”

• Understand key points about the process:

– Multi-stepped, iterative; sometimes unpredictable

– There will be failures—learn rather than punish

– Won’t get answers today if not investing consistently

• Fund activities that bridge research to use:

– Testing, development, demonstration, refinement

– Travel for key staff to interact with peers and experts

Thank you for all your support throughout the SHRP 2

“odyssey”!