DC Department of Transportation (DDOT) Selects EPM Live for Project Transparency


In compliance with the federally mandated reporting requirements in the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) of 2009, the District of Columbia government's Department of Transportation (DDOT) needed a solution to standardize project management processes and provide detailed transparency and accountability reporting to track 15 stimulus-funded projects. Several areas of detailed reporting are required by the bill to provide transparency to the American public regarding project performance (including items such as jobs created), information collection and dissemination, budget execution, and risk management data.

DDOT engaged Innovative-e, an EPM Live partner, to design, construct and implement a project coordination and tracking (PCAT) system to establish project transparency for the 15 projects funded with stimulus money. Once the initial proof of concept (POC) was accepted, the DDOT executive management team requested that the project be expanded to include a system to manage the organization’s entire project portfolio of approximately 500 projects.

The following objectives were put forth to improve project management disciplines and processes throughout the organization using a PCAT system:

• Increase stakeholder communication in an effort to achieve a higher level of responsiveness to the community by providing project visibility and awareness into all portfolio initiatives
• Increase project management consistency using a standardized toolset that is capable of accommodating various project teams and multiple project types, as well as provide a centralized location for project data to improve data integrity and support standardized best practice processes
• Create a system to promote transparent budgeting so that public dollars are accurately tracked—preventing overages, ensuring financial optimization, and providing proper funding allocation
• Establish project management process/controls to trigger early identification of potential project issues and increase stakeholder involvement

Innovative-e designed, constructed and implemented the project coordination and tracking PCAT system to establish project transparency throughout the organization. The system features EPM Live's Project Publisher tool, which provides DDOT with the ability to publish all Microsoft Project plans to SharePoint, putting the process and controls in place to closely monitor project budget and schedule performance.

The PCAT system proved to be a powerful tool that was able to bring all processes, all people and technology together in one solution. Utilizing Microsoft SharePoint, Microsoft Project and EPM Live, DDOT now has global visibility into all projects within their application to ensure project transparency and maximized ROI.

"The idea of bridging the gap between project data vs. organizational data, which is a common problem in many organizations, was a problem we wanted to help solve. It's not a technology problem—it's a need to get all people to work together," said Mike Taylor, Innovative-e president and CEO.