Performance Measurement System for the Public Works Manager

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Contents

Keeping up with change.............................................................5Compstat...........................................................................6Exercise...........................................................................8CitiStat...........................................................................9History:...........................................................................9Exercise...........................................................................12Exercise...........................................................................14The Budget.........................................................................15Exercise...........................................................................19Culture............................................................................21Exercise...........................................................................22Changing the culture...............................................................24Exercise...........................................................................25Resistance.........................................................................26Reaching out within................................................................31Building your goal.................................................................32Exercise...........................................................................33Performance Experiment.............................................................34The Team...........................................................................37Set Ground Rules...................................................................38Forming -Storming- Forming- Performing (FSNP.......................................38Forming............................................................................39Storming...........................................................................40Norming............................................................................41Performing.........................................................................42Prioritize.........................................................................43Parking lots.......................................................................43Road Maps..........................................................................44Sample Categories for Public Works divisions' collection data......................51Exercise...........................................................................51Form Design........................................................................52Notes:.............................................................................55Absences and Attendance............................................................57Overtime/Vehicle Assignment........................................................59Exercise...........................................................................60Notes:.............................................................................61Task Assessment....................................................................63End of daily report................................................................64The Reporting Cycle Summary........................................................67The Performance Cycle..............................................................68The Total column...................................................................72The Average column.................................................................72The Previous Cycle column..........................................................72Year to date column................................................................72Exercise...........................................................................73Notes:.............................................................................74The Room...........................................................................78The Speaker........................................................................79The Manager........................................................................79The Tenets.........................................................................80Accurate and Timely Intelligence Shared by All.....................................80Rapid Re-Deployment of Resources...................................................81Effective Tactics and Strategies...................................................81Relentless Follow-up and Assessment................................................82Exercise...........................................................................83Exercise...........................................................................83Exercise...........................................................................84Mapping............................................................................85Road Division......................................................................86Grounds Division...................................................................86Buildings & Recreation.............................................................86Shade Tree Division................................................................86Sewer Division.....................................................................86Solid Waste........................................................................88Code Enforcement...................................................................88Transportation.....................................................................88Mechanics..........................................................................88Finance............................................................................88Monthly Report.....................................................................89Formulating Quarters...............................................................93Quantitative and Qualitative.......................................................93Problems with This program.........................................................97

Chapter One

Our daily services are all too invisible to the naked eye until things go awry. We must do a better job to communicate the value of our services.

What is performance management?

To some people, performance management means collecting Performance information. To others it implies an appraisal. Utilizing the Compstat and Citistat system within Public Works book's definition incorporates a range of different tools and activities used to drive improvement.

I define performance management as: "Taking action to increase performance of services for users and the public". Action may be at individual, team, service, organization or department level.

Improvement to outcomes should benefit service users but does not always mean increased service levels - sometimes better outcomes can mean delivering better value for money.

Reducing levels of service in one area may free up resources to be used more effectively elsewhere. Performance management will look different in different places, but effective organizations share some common characteristics.

These are:

* Real-time, regular and robust performance data * Can-do culture inspired by strong leadership * Agreed lines of individual accountability * Clear performance management review, combining challenge and support * Transparent set of performance rewards and sanctions

Effective performance management requires:

* Systematically deciding and communicating what needs to be done (aims, objectives, priorities and targets) * A plan for ensuring that it happens (improvement, action or service plans) * Means of assessing if this has been achieved (performance measures) * Information reaching the right people at the right time (performance reporting) so decisions are made and actions taken

These plans and actions fit within a framework that I summarize as 'plan, do, review, revise' later in chapter three "Tasks". Through this framework, learning can be harnessed in a continuous cycle of improvement.

All aspects of management overlap. For example, leadership is not in itself performance management but is essential to its effective use. To work well, it must be coordinated with other systems, such as financial management (directing resources to areas needing improvement or strategic priorities) and risk management (managing risks to avoid failure).

To begin, the entire concept of this program is to spread the message about the success and service provided by your Public Works Department. The responsibility of our department is to ensure that services are rendered efficiently and effectively.

We must continue to ask our resident what changes are needed. Our ultimate goal is making government work in this new information age.

In recent years local government projects have been handicapped by declining citizen confidence, and financial constraints. Basically, citizens do not feel that government understands their concerns, or that citizens have a significant influence on community and local financial decisions.

Most residents are acutely aware of government shortcomings, but far less willing to pay for unnecessary expenditures and are even less conscious of the benefits municipal government provide.

Keeping up with change

With the change of the dynamic of the uniformed departments and the quest for our industry to demand the respect that we deserve, a perfect storm was created.

The uniform divisions no longer have an advantage when attending budget work session. As our elected officials are aware, we should make it our point of advising, that we are now educated through an accredited university and state certification.

More importantly; our certification needs to be maintained by obtaining Continuing Education Units throughout a three year period. This certification is something that our counterparts in the uniform departments are not required to do.

We all look the same. No "Scrambled eggs" on our hats and no badges. Now Public Works managers and Police and Fire Superiors wear suits or suitable attire. We have successfully leveled the playing field. The national homeland security department also aided the bridging of these "Big three" with the inception and mandate to have all Public Works entities train in Incident Command, better known as NIMS.

Then why do we still have an identity complex?

How is Public Works going to compete with the existing uniform departments reporting methods?. Well, as my father often said "If you can't beat them ... Join them!." That is exactly what I intend to do!.

Compstat

Compstat was the Police Department's best kept secret!

Compstat-or COMPSTAT-(short for COMPuter STATistics or COMParative STATistics) is the name given to the New York City Police Department's accountability system and has since been replicated in many other departments.

Compstat is a management philosophy or organizational management tool for police departments, roughly equivalent to Six Sigma or TQM, and is not a computer system or software package.

Instead, Compstat is a multilayered dynamic approach to crime reduction, quality of life improvement, and personnel and resource management.

Compstat employs geographic information systems and was intended to map crime and identify problems. Through weekly meetings, ranking NYPD executives meet with local precinct commanders from one of the eight patrol boroughs in New York City to discuss the problems.

They devise strategies and tactics to solve problems, reduce crime, and ultimately improve quality of life in their assigned area.

Compstat originated in the New York City Police Department in 1994, under leadership of Police Commissioner William Bratton and Deputy Commissioner Jack Maple.

They modified conventional community policing ideology after realizing that, to reduce crime and respond to communities' needs, many operational decisions should be made by commanders at the precinct level. They reasoned that precinct commanders are in a better position than headquarters executives to appreciate and meet their communities' needs, and so gave precinct commanders to give the authority to make the decisions and recommendations as needed.

They also determined that precinct commanders are more cognizant than patrol officers to understand and unify the agency's policies with the social dynamics of their geographic compass. To enact this change, Bratton revised NYPD policies to empower precinct commanders, significantly expanding their authority, responsibility and discretion, as well as their degree of control over personnel and other resources.

As their authority was expanded, their responsibility, discretion and accountability increased as well. Bratton's ideas are based on community policing and the Broken Windows Theory by George L. Kelling.

The LAPD has further expanded Bratton and Maple's work and the results from New York into COMPSTAT Plus. The operations of COMPSTAT include weekly reports, accountability, profile reports, strategy meetings and technologies.

When Martin O'Malley took over as Baltimore's Mayor in December 1999, the city government suffered from rampant absenteeism. In the Department of Public Works, for example, one in seven employees failed to report to work every day on average. This absenteeism required other employees to pick up the slack, which produced high overtime costs and a huge burden on the city's finances.

O'Malley decided to tackle this problem by implementing a data-tracking and management tool similar to CompStat. This was the birth of CitiStat.

CitiStat

CitiStat is a performance-based management group within the Baltimore's Mayor Office assigned with improving service delivery to the city of Baltimore. The Citistat system used the same tenets, process, reporting, and multilayered dynamic approach to quality of life improvement, the delivery of services and personnel and resource management as their predecessor Compstat.

CitiStat Tenets were developed from the tenets created by Jack Maple for New York City's Compstat - a strategy that uses timely and accurate crime data to inform policing efforts. CitiStat uses the same tenets to provide timely, reliable services to Baltimore's residents.

The tenets are as follows:

1) Accurate & timely intelligence shared by all 2) Rapid re-deployment of resources 3) Effective tactics and strategies 4) Relentless follow-up and assessment.

I will go into details of each tenet in a later chapter.

History:

Our industry has historically been the platform for certain employees to seek alternate employment (Usually to the uniform services), and to our fault, services have really never been reduced. When compared with uniform departments Public Works does not offer as many opportunities or advantages as the police or fire divisions.

Originally, the industry was driven by labor.

The earliest evidence of urban sanitation was seen in Harappa, Mohenjodaro and the recently discovered Rakhigarhi of Indus Valley civilization.

This urban plan included the world's first urban sanitation systems. Within the city, individual homes or groups of homes obtained water from wells. From a room that appears to have been set aside for bathing, waste water was directed to covered drains, which lined the major streets. Houses opened only to inner courtyards and smaller lanes.

Roman cities and Roman villas had elements of sanitation systems, delivering water in the streets of towns such as Pompeii, which featured building stone and wooden drains to collect and remove wastewater from populated areas - see for instance the Cloaca Maxima into the River Tiber in Rome. But there is little record of other sanitation systems throughout Europe until the Middle Ages.

Unsanitary conditions and overcrowding were widespread throughout Europe and Asia during the Middle Ages, resulting periodically in cataclysmic pandemics such as the Plague of Justinian (541-42) and the Black Death (1347-1351), which killed tens of millions of people and radically altered societies.

Very high infant and child mortality prevailed in Europe throughout medieval times, due not only to deficiencies in sanitation but to insufficient food for a population which had expanded faster than agriculture. This was further complicated by frequent warfare and exploitation of civilians by brutal rulers. Life for the average person at this time was indeed 'nasty, brutish and short.

Here in the United States, Boston is credited in establishing the first sanitation department, mainly due to early English influence. Shortly thereafter, New Amsterdam (Now New York City) established public works sanitation department.

In recent years, the department of Public Works has become a broader term of its original inception. Originally, Public Works was described as internal improvements.

Internal improvements were defined as a constructed object that augments a nation's economic infrastructure; examples include airports, canals, dams, pipelines, tunnels, railroads, roads and artificial harbors.

Today, in many municipalities, the Department of Public Works is defined as a uniformed force of unionized sanitation workers. Their responsibilities include, but are not limited to, sanitation and recycling collection, street cleaning, snow removal, water treatment, wastewater treatment, road repair, shade tree maintenance, and public building maintenance.

This industry is one of the most advanced in local municipal government.

Years of neglect in the employment of prospective candidates has created a negative public image. Often the term "Politically connected" were hired, some of them with handicaps, but able to perform "Labor" work.

This worked for many years, while labor was the driving force of the industry. As technology advanced, Fire departments moved from the horse drawn water tank to mechanized engines with pumps. As with the Police Department, technology advanced, and quickly moved to modernized radio dispatch centers and alternative crime solving techniques. The Public Works department advanced as well, but not as rapidly as their uniformed counterparts.

This is not to say, that there have not been improvements in the industry. A more appropriate term may be a shortfall of "ground" to the uniform services.

As Police and Fire departments lobbied and increased their importance, and expenses, science and technology enabled them to become more efficient. As building and construction codes became more stringent, fires occurred less frequently, and the fire companies became less active.

Crime scene technology became more advanced, and technology allowed for cameras and global positioning systems in police units, making a police force leaner and more efficient.

In order to reduce costs, elected officials began to decrease the reliability on a Police or Fire Chief, and opted for more affordable options. The Public Safety Director. These events and other similar dynamics all came together in the late 80's. In 1980, the New Jersey Public Works community effectively lobbied the state legislative body of the state and a new legislation was introduced.

Credit is often given to Ray Manfra (retired) for effectively lobbying for the Certified Public Works Manager Law. Ray Manfra envisioned an opportunity to correct past imperfections. Almost as if being in the right place at the right time, Ray began to design a basic blueprint for every Public Works manager. The program is divided into nine course parts. There are three major sections: Management, Technical and Government.

Management

* Management, Tasks, Responsibilities, and Practices * Managing and Developing Human Resources * Public Relations for Public Works

Technical

* Operations Resource Management * Information and Records Management * Municipal Planning and Urban Development

Government

* Local Government in New Jersey * Municipal Budget Process * Public Works Purchasing

To educate our public works administrators and give official recognition to the program, Ray sought help from an accredited institution. With the assistance of Rutgers University, a curriculum was installed, and legislation was introduced in the State Assembly. A certification program from an accredited and respected university was just what the industry needed. The New Jersey Certified Public Works Manager law enabled managers, superintendents, directors and other Public Works leaders to receive the training, education, and knowledge available previously only to the uniformed departments.

In effect, what the industry did was to send a clear message to our counterparts and elected officials that we were not going to accept their insinuations and we as a whole were willing to do whatever was necessary to make it stop. At first the program was expected to fail. How could the industry expect experienced men whom have been doing the work for years, to attend a classroom course?

Well, the trade impressed everyone by having numerous individuals go through a rather rigorous course. Many failed the state exam, retaken the test and passed. In the early 90's New Jersey became the first state in the union to have a Certified Public Works Manager program Public Law 1991c258. To this day, New Jersey is the only State of the Union that has such requirement for Public Works managers.

The Budget

Elected officials, like to decrease the bottom line, but not at the expense of reduction of service. The more they decrease the budget, the more they expect services to remain or in actually increase.

As managers became educated, the uniform departments lost their edge. Annually, each department must present a budget.

Budget refers to a list of all planned expenses and revenues. It is a plan for saving and spending. A budget is an important concept government. In other words, a budget is an organizational plan stated in monetary terms.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from Performance Measurement System for the Public Works Managerby Sergio P. Panunzio Copyright © 2009 by Sergio P. Panunzio. Excerpted by permission.
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