An increase in transportation budgets the past two decades and a consequent movement toward more

outsourcing of DOT activities can be significantly attributed to two historic events. The 1998

authorization of the Transportation Equity Act of the 21st Century (TEA-21), which resulted in an

average increase in state funding of more than 44% in transportation programs. The subsequent

authorization of the Safe, Accountable, Flexible, Efficient Transportation Equity Act: A Legacy for

Users (SAFETEA-LU) in 2005, which extended and expanded the TEA-21 (Warne 2003). As a result,

DOTs were able to complete projects that would have not been feasible without the additional funding.

While these additional projects will decrease congestion and increase transportation safety, the DOTs

have not seen a sufficient increase in personnel to manage the additional work. Consequently, TxDOT

and other state DOTs are addressing their workforce challenges by outsourcing key project

responsibilities that were previously performed by in-house DOT forces and adapting their practices to

perform construction administration more efficiently.

TxDOT’s Construction Division and the district construction departments have a shortage of skilled

inspectors and that is impacting TxDOT’s ability to efficiently manage its QC/QA workload, as

suggested by anecdotal evidence. Several large highway projects, especially in the urban areas, where

contractors are working six or seven days each week, result in construction inspectors working overtime

in order to inspect the work as it is completed. Long-term overtime is a known cause of fatigue (Hanna

2005), and labor laws typically limit the number of consecutive days that a person can work. As a result,

the district personnel have had considerable difficulty meeting the inspection needs and requirements,

especially because state DOTs have difficulty recruiting and retaining experienced and well qualified

inspection personnel. The situation is further complicated with the increase in complexity of

transportation construction projects.

TxDOT faces significant workforce challenges, particularly in the districts, where the testing and

inspection workload is increasing but the workforce is decreasing. As a result of these workforce

challenges, TxDOT is looking for more effective ways to manage their testing, inspection, and

measurement workload. They are looking to other DOTs from which they believe much can be learned.

Other states are facing similar workforce challenges and have taken actions to implement procedures to

reduce their construction inspection workload. Such procedures include increasing contractor testing and

inspection responsibilities, outsourcing testing and inspection to third parties, creating extensive training

and certification programs, and modifying their specifications to minimize time intensive testing and

measurement. Accordingly, there is a need to summarize the best practices from those state DOTs that

have already instituted successful programs to reduce the QC/QA workload that could potentially aid

TxDOT in addressing their specific workload challenges. This project summarized TxDOT’s current

workload challenges, identified successful workload reduction strategies that have been implemented in

other state DOTs, compared TxDOT’s challenges and practices to the other states’ challenges and

practices, and lastly prioritized the workload reduction strategies implemented in other states that could

be applied to manage TxDOT’s workforce challenges.