Senate committee shown DOTD's new project viewer dashboard to track highway work

BATON ROUGE, La. — The Senate Committee on Transportation and Public Works on Thursday saw a live demonstration of DOTD's new T4LA project viewer, a public map and an internal schedule dashboard intended to show project status, letting dates and "open to traffic" dates for highway and bridge work.

The tool, presented by Joe Donahue, secretary of the Department of Transportation and Development, and Jerry Holder, senior vice president at engineering firm Garver, displays about 1,000 projects on day one and separates them into preconstruction, construction and open-to-traffic layers. "This is part of the transparency that the DOTD is shifting towards," Donahue said.

Committee members said the viewer should help legislators and constituents track projects in their districts. "When you click on your name, it's gonna zoom in to your district and it's gonna show the projects associated with you," Holder said during the demonstration. He showed examples including bridge replacements and rehab projects with estimated letting and open-to-traffic dates.

Nut graf: DOTD officials described two linked systems: the public-facing project viewer and an internal project-delivery dashboard that functions as an early-warning system for schedule risk. Staff said the system will be updated nightly from DOTD databases, with human input required to record task completions and changes.

The internal dashboard displays schedule items, responsible program managers and a color-coded risk indicator for projects drifting behind schedule. "If a project is in risk of a letting date move, we're gonna flag it up there so that the engineering chief can say, 'hey, I need to go focus on this,'" Holder said. The internal tool had about 466 projects loaded in the demonstration and included a view showing how many days a project component is ahead or behind schedule.

Senators pressed several operational questions. Senator Wheat asked where the data entry will occur and how many DOTD staff will be needed; Donahue and Holder said existing DOTD employees will provide input and Garver is assisting with initial data loading. "Most of the input, all of the input will be done by existing DOTD employees," Donahue said.

Senator Cloud urged the department to add financial and performance metrics in later phases so the public could also see investment amounts and pavement performance. Donahue said those features are part of later phases and that the project viewer will expand to include more details "later this year." Senators also raised the need to include projects managed by the Division of Administration and the proposed Office of Highway Construction so the public does not face competing systems.

Committee members repeatedly emphasized data currency. Holder said the system will be updated nightly and that users will see the latest data "from the day before." Donahue added the dashboard includes checks to show when the last update occurred so supervisors can confirm that entries are recent.

Officials described the project viewer as the public-facing component of a broader set of improvements that DOTD is rolling out under a strategic improvement plan and an executive order from the governor. Garver's role, Donahue said, is to help stand up the tool and bring best practices from other state departments of transportation.

The presentation included a walkthrough of both the map-based project viewer and the internal schedule and task-tracking pages. Holder demonstrated that users can filter projects by status, click to view letting dates and open-to-traffic dates, and view a timeline of activities including environmental reviews and other milestones. The internal view allows supervisors to see tasks due in the next 30 days for a given project manager.

Senators welcomed the move toward transparency but warned that the tool will only be useful if the underlying data are kept current. "Information solves a lot of our problems," Senator Carter said. Donahue said DOTD already has begun loading and vetting data and that the system will remain under development to add financials, bid and change-order details and additional project types.

Ending: DOTD said the project viewer link will be emailed to senators the same day as the demonstration. Staff said the system will remain under development with subsequent phases focusing on financial details and additional performance indicators.