Specialized Safety Training and Tracking for KYTC Construction and Maintenance Personnel

High-quality safety training is critical for educating employees in the highway construction and maintenance industry about workplace hazards and giving them tools to remove and/or minimize associated risks. But researchers and state transportation agencies have not committed enough resources to develop safety trainings that address the unique needs of this sector. This report fills in this gap for the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) by cataloguing safety training resources available through other state and federal transportation agencies, documenting trainings available to Cabinet staff, identifying and prioritizing training gaps, and critically evaluating the content, quality, and duration of training resources. A web-based tool developed as part of this effort can be used by KYTC employees to quickly identify training resources by topic and view evaluations. In collaboration with the Kentucky Transportation Center’s Technology Transfer Program, researchers propose recommendations for safety trainings that can address needs beyond the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) 10-hour course Cabinet employees take. Future efforts should work to integrate these training modules into KYTC’s recently acquired comprehensive safety management system

Roadmap to a Holistic Highway Digital Twin: A Why, How, & Why Framework

The advent and spread of the COVID-19 pandemic shifted the world’s focus toward investing in social structure projects that would improve urbanization and enhance equity. This shift compiled with the emergence of innovative technologies namely Digital Twins, allowed for investigating new approaches for designing and delivering infrastructures, thus paving the road toward smarter infrastructures. Smart infrastructures achieved by connecting the physical aspect of the infrastructure with its digital aspect will allow for optimizing the performance of infrastructure systems by digitally enhancing the asset value and leveraging the value of asset data. Digital Twins can be applied to several civil infrastructure projects including the transportation sector. Also, Digital Twins can be implemented for different spatial scales, on a national level, on the level of the city, and for a network of assets. Few case studies described how to transfer a Digital Twin vision to practice; thus, this chapter presents the journey for a holistic Digital Twin for a highway system formed of a network of assets by discussing the Why, How, and What framework. A holistic highway Digital Twin will allow for cross-asset data analysis, conducting predictive and preventive maintenance, and efficient resource allocation based on data-driven decision-making

Development, Implementation, and Tracking of Preventative Safety Metrics

What gets measured, gets improved. With respect to the safety and health of Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) employees, the primary metric used has been the OSHA recordable incident rate. This incident rate measures how often a Cabinet employee sustains an injury that demands more than basic first aid. This metric is important for understanding injury frequencies, but it does not assist with management of the safety, health, and overall well-being of KYTC personnel. Based on a review of leading safety indicators adopted by various industries, this study devised a comprehensive list of safety metrics the Cabinet will benefit from tracking. Metrics were evaluated, organized, weighted, and compiled into a three-tier scorecard that is used to assess performance at KYTC’s district, area, and executive levels. Five major dimensions of an effective safety program were identified: (1) management leadership and commitment, (2) employee engagement, (3) training and competence, (4) hazard identification and control, and (5) evaluation and improvement. Surveys of KYTC districts found that all metrics performed robustly, while stakeholders at executive levels usually assigned lower scores to the five dimensions. Employee engagement had the lowest score. The Cabinet will benefit from seeking out more opportunities to involve employees in the agency’s safety program. Equally, the study reiterates the value of gaining management buy-in, support, and leadership when working to eliminate incidents and injuries

Evaluating the Use of a Near-Miss Reporting Program to Enhance Employee Safety Performance

Using safety incidents and crashes to improve safety performance is an outdated and reactive practice in safety and health programs. One component of a modern approach to safety is a near-miss reporting program. This type of program tracks close calls or near misses that do not result in an incident or crash, but which often can be an early indicator that one may happen. While most construction companies have implemented some methods for reporting near-miss events, many agencies, such as the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC), struggle getting employees to report near misses. To fill this gap, potential factors that result in a lack of reporting are identified through a synthesis of existing literature, areas for improving existing near-miss reporting systems are discussed, and a survey was administered to KYTC maintenance superintendents. Results of this study suggest that many of the barriers that lead to a lack of near-miss reporting stem from the management level. Proposed suggestions to overcome barriers related to near-miss reporting include providing and/or requiring better near-miss training, making KYTC’s web-based reporting tool more well-known and accessible, and taking more visible corrective actions once near misses are reported. Future work should address the causes of near-miss events and strategies to reduce near-miss incidents on jobsites

Evaluating the Safety Cultures of Kentucky Transportation Cabinet Maintenance Crews

Highway work zones can be dangerous and unpredictable. Between 2003 and 2017, over 1,800 workers died on road construction sites. Eliminating injuries and deaths requires state transportation agencies to adopt robust safety cultures as there is a clear relationship between these cultures and worker behaviors. The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) is committed to improving safety performance by nurturing a positive safety climate among highway maintenance crews. To understand the safety cultures of KYTC maintenance crews, researchers administered a survey based on the Safety Climate Assessment Tool (S-CAT) developed by the Center for Construction Research and Training (CPWR). This is the first tool developed for the construction industry. The survey was used to quantified the existing safety climate and evaluate how effective safety programs and controls are at reducing workplace hazards. Survey respondents answered questions on 37 indicators across eight safety climate categories: employee risk perception, management commitment, aligning and integrating safety as a value, ensuring accountability at all levels, improving supervisory leadership, empowering and involving employees, improving communication, and safety training. For each indicator respondents assigned a rating on a five-point Likert scale — Inattentive (1), Reactive (2), Compliant (3), Proactive (4), Exemplary (5). Analysis of survey responses at the statewide and district levels found that KYTC’s safety culture can be characterized as between compliant and proactive. Focus groups with maintenance superintendents generated recommendations to improve safety cultures and install multiple layers of preventive measures to further reduce the number and threat of jobsite hazards

DIGITAL TWINS FOR ANCILLARY TRANSPORTATION ASSET DATA MANAGEMENT

Transportation Asset Management (TAM) is a data-driven decision-making process to maintain and extend the serviceability of transportation assets throughout their lifecycle. TAM is an extensive data process requiring accurate, high-quality information for better decision-making. A significant challenge that state Departments of Transportation (DOTs) face is allocating limited funds to optimize their assets’ performance. The criticality of this challenge increases when state DOTs need to manage a wide variety of assets distributed along with a vast network; thus, they prioritize the management of high-value assets and visible ones such as bridges, and they pay less attention to ancillary assets even though a significant percentage of these assets is critical for highway safety. This research aims to fill the gap in the current body of knowledge by focusing on ancillary transportation assets, a complicated area of the highway system that researchers and practitioners rarely investigate. Conversely, emerging technologies, namely Digital Twins, have the potential to leverage the value of asset data and transform data into valuable insights to inform decision-making. The research arc “What- Where- and How” implementing Digital Twins as an information management system for transportation assets was explored to expand the knowledge on Digital Twins further. This research 1) investigates the awareness of the Digital Twins concept and its implementation in the civil infrastructure industry, 2) documents the current practices of state DOTs toward the digital transition of their transportation asset data, contextualizes the DOTs’ maturity in the advancement of digital processes, and determines where they stand in their Digital Twins journey, and 3) investigates how to support state DOTs in achieving their Digital Twins vision for infrastructure assets by identifying the data requirements and the “ideal” environment that fulfills the vision of Digital Twins. Additionally, this research helps set the wheel to put the Digital Twins vision into action by developing the laying foundation for an interactive business canvas model that state DOTs can use as a guidance tool to implement Digital Twins