6.2. — Treatment Selection and Project Creation
While DAF, PMO, and DTD are forecasting and managing future revenues and program budgets, asset managers and the regions are planning for and creating projects. The first two steps of the Program and Project Lifecycle loosely align to the steps that CDOT takes to create and financially manage its projects (see Figure 6-2 below).
Figure 6-2
Because a significant portion of the department’s budget is dedicated to asset management, these two steps—Treatment Selection and Project Creation—will be illustrated using examples of asset management. Asset Management—the preservation of CDOT’s existing infrastructure—begins with an inventory of assets. Through modeling of a single asset category (e.g., Surface Treatment or Bridge), an asset manager at headquarters or in the region forecasts the necessary treatments and timing for the individual assets within that category.
Treatments are prioritized based on a variety of factors—agency goals and objectives, asset category performance metrics, coordination across asset categories and within the region, etc. The byproduct of this iterative process—drastically oversimplified here—is an Asset/Fund Treatment List that offers to the region an ordered list of candidate treatments. The region considers available financial and human resources and a number of other factors in determining how to best mix and match the right treatments to form projects.
These first two processes in the delivery and monitoring of projects—Treatment Selection and Project Creation—are linked below.
