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In response to Fattah Hashem-zadeh's inquiry, from
my experience with infrastructure engineering groups, some of the most useful
types of performance measures that come to mind involve what I call "project
management measures." In other words, using project management principles
to report things such as the number or percent of projects proceeding on time or
completed on time, and the number or percent of projects proceeding within
budget or completed within budget. (Tolerances can be defined into the
definitions, such as +5% or +10% still considered "on budget," or within 2 weeks
or a month of the target date, or even completed within the planned quarter,
considered "on time," depending on the size & type of project, and it's
sensitivity to delaying other projects.) If the jurisdiction has an
approved multi-year capital plan and the engineering division has an approved
set of projects, one could also look at percent of plan completed each year vs.
schedule for each year (done in dollars and/or number of projects--if done
in dollars make sure cost overruns are also measured).
You may want to check out what infrastructure
managers (e.g., transportation, water & wastewater, public works) have to
say about things like using performance measurement for asset planning,
budgeting, and increasing efficiency and quality in the GASB Case studies,
accessible from the front page of this GASB PMG web site: http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/seagov/pmg/index.html
Of the GASB case studies, the City of Austin
(Texas), and State of Iowa case studies come to mind with good descriptions of
uses of performance measurement by infrastruture managers, though you may have
to read thru these cases a bit to find them, as they're not organized by
service. That suggests that the Austin
Transportation and Public Works Dept, the Austin Water and Wastewater Dept, and
the Iowa Transportation Dept would be good places to contact.
ALSO, the City of Charlotte (North Carolina)
Transportation Dept is an often-used example of what a department has done to
develop detailed "balanced scorecard" performance measures throughout the
organization to fit in with the City's overall balanced scorecard scheme.
Somewhere within that, the Charlotte Transportation Dept must have developed
measures relevant to its infrastructure engineering work. So I'd also
suggest contacting the City of Charlotte's Transportation Dept. I know
Charlotte also has other depts that do construction and capital maintenance
(including public building and facilities management) that have good performance
measures, so the Charlotte City Manager's Office of Office of Budget and
Evaluation would be a good place to contact, to find out which departments have
comparable responsibilities and potentially useful measures. I would bet
the City of Phoenix (Arizona's) City Manager's Office would be a good place to
contact for similar information on the well-measured City of Phoenic.
Finally, a few years ago the City of Portland (Oregon) Water Bureau made a name
for itself by developing a methodology for cost comparisons of using internal
crews vs. contractors to do mid-size construction projects, and to determine
whether to do them in-house or use contractors. I actually have an old
contact name there--Robert W. Rieck, whom I think was something like the
Bureau's finance & budget director, though he has an engineering
background.
I hope these leads are helpful.
--Paul Epstein
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