Implementation of Minnesota Department of Transportation’s (MnDOT’s) $10 million Transportation Asset Management System (TAMS) has made the lives of Minnesota highway users better by improving MnDOT’s ability to reduce risks of asset failure and poor performance and increase financial efficiency of the management of a long list of highway assets over a long period of time, allowing the department to save taxpayer dollars and better utilize the assets the department already has in the name of safety and reliability for everyone on the road. From 2015 through 2019, MnDOT not only implemented a broad, deeply integrated asset management software, but collaboratively developed dozens of new business practices. These relate to a range of things such things as acquiring and managing asset data, coordinating with the Transportation Asset Management Plan (TAMP) to implement management best practices, improving capital project programming and scoping processes, and recording and sharing agency maintenance costs and outcomes. The TAMS system now houses data for nearly all of MnDOT’s non-pavement and bridge highway assets. Since these benefits are applied to the entire state network, the impact is shared among 5.6 million citizens.
This project also improved Minnesota taxpayers’ return on investments in MnDOT’s maintenance operations. In conjunction with the implementation of the TAMS, MnDOT developed numerous performance measures and targets for its staff operations, such as response times to asset damage (such as guardrails, signs, and crash terminals), inspections, or asset condition improvements. The performance measures provide financial benefits through improved prioritization, planning, and resource deployment. The tool helps MnDOT reduce safety risk for the traveling public and increase resiliency related to extreme weather events by knowing what exists, where it is located, and what its condition is.
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