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Paperless Roads

The Michigan Department of Transportation is building its infrastructure future with a dream from the past – going completely paperless.

In 1975, George Pake, then-head of Xerox Corp.'s Palo Alto Research Center, was featured in a BusinessWeek article on the future of the office. Pake made a number of predictions that in retrospect seem pretty spot on. He told the magazine that by 1995 he expected that “there will be a TV-display terminal with keyboard sitting on his desk.”

"I'll be able to call up documents from my files on the screen, or by pressing a button. I can get my mail or any messages. I don't know how much hard copy [printed paper] I'll want in this world."

steudle140-104392-7.jpgPake’s comments suggested many changes were coming to the workplace – including the idea of the paperless office. Forty years later, it would seem the paperless office has yet to materialize. But at the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT), Pake’s prediction has finally come to pass.

Beginning in 2013, MDOT launched a pilot project called e-Construction. MDOT Director Kirk T. Steudle (pictured) said the inspiration for e-Construction came when he and some of his colleagues attended a conference that featured information about Building Information Modeling, or BIM.

BIM, according to engineering and design software company Autodesk, is an intelligent, model-based process for planning, designing, building and managing buildings and infrastructure. In other words, an intelligent, super-charged 3D modeling system that works in real time among all stakeholders.

“I looked at this 3D model and thought OK, but this is a building, it’s all in the same space. How do you do it for a seven-mile road?” recalled Steudle.

Later, Steudle met with MDOT staff and partners to talk about whether they thought they could create a BIM-like, paperless solution for managing highway construction projects. The MDOT team said yes but existing connectivity issues within the agency would make creating what would become e-Construction a five year project. Steudle offered them two years.

“You tell me what barriers are in your way, what’s stopping you from doing it, and I’ll get them out of the way for you,” Steudle said to his staff.

Next, Steudle went to the Michigan Department of Technology, Management and Budget (DTMB) to pitch them on the connectivity upgrade requested by MDOT staff. DTMB initially resisted, arguing they didn’t have the funds.

“They said ‘we don’t have money for that.’ And I said, no, no, I’m paying the bill, I just need you to do it,” Steudle said.

Ultimately, Steudle met with state Chief Information Officer David Behen who liked the idea and the millions in potential savings that were projected if the paperless system worked.

“[David] got it real fast,” Steudle said. “He said ‘let’s figure out how to do this’ and it was with his help, he could push back through their bureaucracy and got his team and my team working together.”

Eventually, thanks to a combination of mobile devices, electronic construction plans and filing systems, electronic document submittals, fillable forms, automated document workflows and digital signatures, the e-Construction system was born.

In 2013, MDOT piloted the system on four highway construction projects worth, in sum, $140 million. These early attempts went really well, Steudle said.

“It was absolutely phenomenal. From the pilots we figured when we implement this we’d probably save $4 million to $6 million.”

Everything in the process was now electronic – design, payroll, inspectors’ reports, and even the contactors’ documents, many of which are now created in BIM-like 3D.

Last year, MDOT ramped e-Construction up to an even larger project to rebuild a portion of I-96 in western Detroit.

“We did a huge project in one of the suburbs of Detroit – a seven mile, eight lane freeway, forty bridges – in a 165 days and $150 million,” Steudle said. “Not a piece of paper.” What’s more, new estimates based on last year’s I-96 project have pushed cost savings up from the initial $4 million to $6 million closer to $12 million.

Even the change order process has been radically improved. Typically, that process would take about 100 to 120 days. “Doing it electronically we did it in three, and that included approval from the federal government,” Steudle said.

Going forward, virtually all MDOT projects will be implemented in paperless fashion. For Steudle, a public figure nationally known for his groundbreaking work on connected and autonomous vehicles, e-Construction has proven to be a significant victory that can be replicated by any agency.

“The connected car stuff, we focus so much on that but it’s got a long tail,” Steudle said. “This, we’re in it, we’re doing it right now and it can save people time and money right now.”