Staff Meeting Update

Just want to update you on a few items that were discussed at The Region's staff meeting. Dashboard measures and Budget cuts will be what I will elaborate on. Performance plans were also discussed, but I will talk about them with you on another post.

The discussion on dashboard measures revealed that the measures for Region One Preconstruction was not up to date. The measure that was posted on the innerweb had not been updated since January 2006. Total Preliminary Engineering cost is what was being measured back then. Jason asked that all outdated measures be removed from the dashboards and he also asked that we review our measures and find a meaningful measure to place on the dashboards. Our group has been working with the Project Managers to improve the RPDU which looks at Project Delivery. Preconstruction RPDU measures schedules and budgets specifically, but also shows comparisons of contractor payments and contractor's bids vs engineer's estimate. We will look at the RPDU for a replacement measure to update the dashboards for Region Proconstruction and Project Management.

Another item that was discussed was budget cuts. Jason indicated that John Njord stated that we will not balance the budget on the backs of the employees. John was referring to furloughs that other agencies have used to balance their budgets. UDOT will not fill vacant position unless they are criticle to our operations. Those position should not go away but just would not be filled until the budgets can accommodate them. Other budget cuts include things like bottled water, and reviewing both cell and land line phone needs. We have already identified two cell phones that were non essential and are looking at removing some landlines for those who have cell phones. The only issue to this is that currently the front desk cannot forward a phone call to cell phones. Joni is looking into if that can be fixed so then we will identify which landlines can be removed. The water issue can be solved if everyone would like to contribute I will put the water account in my name and continue the service. The cost per year is about $600 or for 30 people it would be $20 each per year. The only caveat for me is that I would want to pay for the whole year up front. I have talked with a few of you and those whom I talked too want the water.