National Academies Press: OpenBook

Guide for Customer-Driven Benchmarking of Maintenance Activities (2004)

Chapter: Chapter 2 - Selecting Benchmarking Partners

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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 2 - Selecting Benchmarking Partners." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2004. Guide for Customer-Driven Benchmarking of Maintenance Activities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13720.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 2 - Selecting Benchmarking Partners." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2004. Guide for Customer-Driven Benchmarking of Maintenance Activities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13720.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 2 - Selecting Benchmarking Partners." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2004. Guide for Customer-Driven Benchmarking of Maintenance Activities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13720.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 2 - Selecting Benchmarking Partners." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2004. Guide for Customer-Driven Benchmarking of Maintenance Activities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13720.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 2 - Selecting Benchmarking Partners." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2004. Guide for Customer-Driven Benchmarking of Maintenance Activities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13720.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 2 - Selecting Benchmarking Partners." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2004. Guide for Customer-Driven Benchmarking of Maintenance Activities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13720.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 2 - Selecting Benchmarking Partners." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2004. Guide for Customer-Driven Benchmarking of Maintenance Activities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13720.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 2 - Selecting Benchmarking Partners." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2004. Guide for Customer-Driven Benchmarking of Maintenance Activities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13720.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 2 - Selecting Benchmarking Partners." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2004. Guide for Customer-Driven Benchmarking of Maintenance Activities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13720.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 2 - Selecting Benchmarking Partners." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2004. Guide for Customer-Driven Benchmarking of Maintenance Activities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13720.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 2 - Selecting Benchmarking Partners." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2004. Guide for Customer-Driven Benchmarking of Maintenance Activities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13720.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 2 - Selecting Benchmarking Partners." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2004. Guide for Customer-Driven Benchmarking of Maintenance Activities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13720.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 2 - Selecting Benchmarking Partners." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2004. Guide for Customer-Driven Benchmarking of Maintenance Activities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13720.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 2 - Selecting Benchmarking Partners." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2004. Guide for Customer-Driven Benchmarking of Maintenance Activities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13720.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 2 - Selecting Benchmarking Partners." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2004. Guide for Customer-Driven Benchmarking of Maintenance Activities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13720.
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Suggested Citation:"Chapter 2 - Selecting Benchmarking Partners." National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. 2004. Guide for Customer-Driven Benchmarking of Maintenance Activities. Washington, DC: The National Academies Press. doi: 10.17226/13720.
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29 CHAPTER 2: SELECTING BENCHMARKING PARTNERS Customer-driven benchmarking requires organizations that perform or are responsible for highway maintenance to make a commitment to work together for a considerable period of time— at least 2 years to obtain meaningful initial results and 3 to 5 years to make substantial progress toward continuous improvement. The commitment of the benchmarking participants involves using an agreed-upon set of measures focused on customer-driven outcomes, taking measurements for a set of benchmarking units, sharing the data regarding the benchmarking units, and sharing details of the maintenance practices of the benchmarking units. This guide distinguishes between benchmarking partners and benchmarking units. Benchmarking partners are organizations that have the authority to do all of the following: ♦ Enter into an agreement with other organizations to perform customer-driven benchmarking; ♦ Define a set of maintenance products and, services, or both that are appropriate for their organization; and ♦ Establish or change the performance measures used by their organization. The types of organizations that satisfy these three criteria are ♦ State agencies, ♦ Cities, ♦ Counties, ♦ Turnpike authorities, ♦ Private-sector firms, ♦ Organizations in different industries, and ♦ Organizations in other countries. Benchmarking units are the units within a particular level of an organization that compare performances with one another to identify best practices and to continually improve. Customer- driven benchmarking is unlikely to be successful unless the benchmarking units have the following attributes: Internal benchmarking may be the best place to begin a customer-driven benchmarking initiative.

♦ The managers of the units make decisions regarding the resources (labor, equipment, and material) used in their geographical area and the procedures for applying them. ♦ The managers of the units bear responsibility for the results of the maintenance program in their geographic area. ♦ The driving public can distinguish the results the units achieve over a specific time period from the results that neighboring units or other units achieve. ♦ The organization under which the unit resides finds it practical and economically feasible to collect statistically valid customer satisfaction data. A benchmarking partner and a benchmarking unit are not necessarily the same—for example, a state maintenance organization could be a benchmarking partner with benchmarking units consisting of districts, counties, areas, or garages. Private companies could be benchmarking partners, and their benchmarking units could consist of districts. County government or municipalities could both be partners, while having subunits that are benchmarking units. It is strongly recommended that a state maintenance organization not be a benchmarking unit. The state maintenance organization is represented by a headquarters that usually is too far removed from the actual performance of maintenance work and from the outcomes of maintenance perceived by road users. Also, it is unlikely that the state has just one set of practices for a maintenance product or service; it is likely there are many different practices for any maintenance product or service across a state. In short, the benchmarking partners make an agreement to work together and to settle upon mutually agreed-upon performance measures. In contrast, the benchmarking units are the level at which performances are compared and descriptions of practices are prepared. New or different practices are implemented at the organizational level of the benchmarking unit. Chapter 2: Selecting Benchmarking Partners 30

CRITERIA FOR SELECTING PARTNERS Finding maintenance practices that lead to better performance is an important objective of customer-driven benchmarking. The criteria that you use to select partners should be consistent with this objective. Initial Agreement on What to Benchmark As explained earlier, customer-driven benchmarking requires that a maintenance agency define its purpose and function in terms of a set of products and services that it provides to its customers (e.g., a smooth ride); the important attributes of each product or service (e.g., a smooth pavement surface); and customer-driven outcome measures (e.g., the International Roughness Index, Customer Satisfaction Rating) related to each attribute. There are many demanding steps to go through, and it is likely that neither you nor most of your partners have been through this process. In the absence of a mutually agreeable set of products and services, each agency can agree to the general area that they want to benchmark, perhaps focusing upon the types of maintenance assets of mutual interest. The benchmarking partnership should not admit organizations that cannot agree on the same general focus as the other partners. Suppose that the organizations of a benchmarking partnership are primarily interested in providing higher quality and more effective signage to customers. An agency that is only interested in benchmarking its performance in delivering a comfortable ride to customers would not be a good candidate for the partnership. Cooperation and Willingness to Share Information Partners need to demonstrate cooperation and a willingness to share information. The lead benchmarking organization needs to be assured that each participant will use agreed-upon measures, collect accurate data for each benchmarking unit, share the data with the partners, document existing practices, and share information on best practices with all the benchmarking partners. The more open and forthcoming potential partners are in 31

preliminary discussions about their degree of commitment and the quality of existing performance information, the more likely it is that they will cooperate and share information. Willingness to Create Common Measures A community of organizations that uses or has adopted common customer-driven performance measures represents a major target of opportunity to develop a set of benchmarking partners. However, in the early 2000s, it is unlikely that you will find organizations external to yours that use precisely the same measures that you use or would like to use. Customer-driven benchmarking requires common types of data to create common measures of performance. For example, if one agency measures sign quality through rigorous retro-reflectivity measurements and customer surveys and a second agency measures sign quality through “windshield surveys,” you cannot compare performance. An essential criteria for selecting a partner is its willingness to work with others to define common measures of performance and to develop data collection procedures that will be used by everyone. Some agencies have defined their own performance measures, data requirements, and data collection procedures and are not willing to consider changes that will be necessary for a particular benchmarking partnership. These agencies are not suitable members of the partnership. Commitment to Data and Measurement Quality Benchmarking does not require “audit quality data,” but it will fail without continually paying adequate attention to data and measurement quality. Each benchmarking partner needs to be willing to submit to a benchmarking process that instills faith in all partners that measurements are accurate and reliable enough to serve as the basis for identifying best practices and improvement opportunities. If you think a partner’s commitment to measurement quality is weak, you should seek partners elsewhere. Chapter 2: Selecting Benchmarking Partners 32

Commitment of Time, Effort, and Resources Successful benchmarking requires a strong commitment of time, effort, and resources among all participants. Potential partners that signal a willingness to make this commitment should be among your top preferences. Keep looking for partners if discussions with a potential partner suggest it may have a problem making a serious commitment to benchmarking. Be alert to any unwillingness of potential partners to devote staff, equipment, materials, data collection, databases, or other resources that are essential to successful benchmarking. Operating Environment You may want to find a group of benchmarking partners that have benchmarking units that operate in similar environments (e.g., weather, terrain, population density). By doing so, you do not have to control for different environmental factors when taking measurements, and it is more likely that it is feasible to implement a best practice discovered by one of the benchmarking units. Suppose that benchmarking partners are going to benchmark the service “roadways clear of snow.” Assume further that the benchmarking units of those partners operate at totally different elevation levels (elevations above 5,000 feet and elevations of less than 600 feet above sea level). These benchmarking units are less likely to have practices relevant to one another than if they all operated at the same elevations. More typically, you will benchmark with partners that function in a variety of operating conditions, including conditions that are very different from yours. Benchmarking units in different operating environments will have adapted to different factors (hardships) that affect their maintenance operations. Sometimes the practices that have evolved in sharply different settings are a source of new ideas that can help your agency improve its performance. 33

Public Sector or Private Sector If you are a public agency, you may desire to limit your partners to those in the public sector. One reason to do so is to build a group of benchmarking partners through government and quasi- governmental associations such as the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, the National Association of County Engineers, the National League of Cities, the Conference of Mayors, the American Public Works Association, and the International Bridge Tunnel and Turnpike Association. Public-sector partners are more likely to have similar cultures and outlook, which may make it easier to communicate and work together. On the other hand, public agencies contract out various types of maintenance operations to private companies. Sometimes public agencies even contract out all types of maintenance activities along a route (i.e., an Interstate highway) or even within a certain jurisdiction. Although there is no strict rule that the private sector is more effective or efficient in serving customers, in many cases the private sector can be more responsive to customer demands. There is a great deal to learn from the business practices of the private sector because the revenue, profitability, and survival of private firms depend on their being attuned to customers and remaining competitive. You may also want to consider benchmarking with private firms that are not in road maintenance—for example, firms that do landscaping for campuses, buildings, and parks might be a source of innovative ideas and best practices that you would not discover without their involvement. As another example, many firms specializing in facilities maintenance might provide insight about how to improve the management of rest areas owned and operated by public agencies. National or International A number of states, including Minnesota and Michigan, have cultivated close relationships with other countries in order to learn from them. These states clearly perceive the benefits of learning what organizations in other parts of the world are doing. Chapter 2: Selecting Benchmarking Partners 34

Fewer barriers to trade and constantly improving communications have created a global economy that knows no borders. Multinational corporations find it imperative to stay abreast of best practices from around the world. When they engage in a benchmarking effort, they not only select organizations in their own country, but also search worldwide for the “best in breed,” “best in class,” or “world class.” In the most competitive environments, firms that do benchmarking hope not only to identify best practices, but also to leapfrog past them. You may not feel the competitive pressure to be the best on a global scale, but many road maintenance managers are interested in adopting best practices from anywhere in the world if doing so is a means of efficiently and effectively improving customer products and services and of fostering superior performance in their own agencies. DETERMINING THE ORGANIZATIONAL LEVEL AT WHICH TO BENCHMARK A decision you will need to make before finalizing a partnership agreement is to determine at what geographic or organizational level you plan to or can benchmark; this is the benchmarking unit. Key considerations are as follows: 1. There should be well-defined administrative, geographic, or natural boundaries. Districts, areas, garages, counties, and municipalities qualify as administrative units. Quadrants or sections within a county or city should have geographical features that make it easy for the driving public to distinguish boundaries. Rivers, lines of trees, changes in topography, railroad tracks, and major highways help to make such distinctions. 2. You should benchmark at an organizational level as close to the delivery of maintenance to customers as possible, but also where customers can discern differences in performance from one geographical area to another due to differences in maintenance practices. Managers should have a good deal of control over the outcomes of maintenance at this organizational level. Among the factors managers should be able to influence are whether 35

to contract out work, the number of crews to assign to various maintenance activities and different locations, the types and configurations of resources to apply, and when the work should be performed. 3. As a rule of thumb, you should benchmark at the lowest level at which you can survey customers practically and economically to obtain statistically valid measures of their satisfaction with a product or service. In a state agency, this is likely to be an area approximately the size of a county (however, today most state agencies do not have statistically valid customer satisfaction data below the district level, such as at the county or area level). The same practical and economic considerations apply to condition or level-of-service data obtained from a random sample of roadway sections used in a Maintenance Quality Assurance Process described under NCHRP Project 14-12 (published as NCHRP Web Document 8). 4. Generally, a crew or a roadway section should not be the benchmarking unit; the benchmarking unit should encompass the activities of a number of crews. There are exceptions. For example, it is reasonable to benchmark at the crew level if benchmarking is going to focus on the performance of specialized crews serving a broad area. Examples of specialized crews are sign or striping crews. Sometimes, it is also reasonable for a roadway section to be a benchmarking unit if it is part of a tollway or if it is a road that a contractor is maintaining. NUMBER OF BENCHMARKING PARTNERS How many benchmarking partners will you need? The number of partners is not the issue; the number of benchmarking units is the important number. You want enough benchmarking units among the partners to be able to differentiate levels of performance and to identify best practices within different environments (i.e., rural and urban areas). If you apply mathematical or statistical procedures, the techniques may have properties that depend on the number of observations (i.e., benchmarking units) to achieve a desired resolution, accuracy, or statistical significance. Chapter 2: Selecting Benchmarking Partners 36

Rules of thumb from statistics and experience in applying rigorous methods of benchmarking suggest you will need at least 30 observations. This means you will need at least 30 benchmarking units among the partners. You can make do with less, but your ability to identify practices that are better for any one of the benchmarking units will decline accordingly. Large agencies such as state transportation agencies can perform customer-driven benchmarking without forming partnerships: they can benchmark internally among subunits—areas, garages, counties, and regions—all under the state’s jurisdiction. For many states, internal benchmarking may be the best way to start customer-driven benchmarking, allowing you to proceed more quickly. Subunits within the organization usually share a common vision, a mission, overall political goals, measures, data, a management structure, and communications networks. The principal disadvantage of benchmarking within your own organization is that the best practices that you can potentially identify are limited to the best practices of your organization. By looking outside your organization, you are open to new possibilities. No matter how good your own practices are, the further you look beyond your organization, the greater your opportunity to learn from others and to improve how you serve your customers. NEGOTIATING A CUSTOMER-DRIVEN BENCHMARKING PARTNERS AGREEMENT Once benchmarking partners have been identified, it will be necessary to negotiate a benchmarking agreement. There are many important issues to address, and some may be difficult to resolve. If yours is the lead organization, while getting ready to benchmark you should identify a person in your agency who has excellent facilitation and negotiating skills. That person should be the primary point of contact with each benchmarking partner and should take the lead in forging a benchmarking agreement. You should take advantage of any existing relationships among managers in each partner organization. Frequently the head of maintenance in your organization will know the head of 37

maintenance in many of the partner organizations and can help close the deal on the benchmarking agreement. Also, the chief executive officer (CEO) in your organization may know his or her counterparts in other organizations. Reaching agreement to benchmark sometimes requires considerable political sensitivity. The CEO is likely to have the sensitivity to get the commitments of time, effort, and resources from other organizations that are necessary to succeed. Principles of Partnership Agreements Many years of experience by large numbers of organizations have led to a benchmarking code of behavior that has two overriding principles: 1. The golden rule, “Do unto others as you would have others do unto you,” and 2. Do not do anything illegal or unethical. In the private sector, competitors have to be very careful to protect proprietary information and not run afoul of antitrust laws, which prohibit anti-competitive practices. A set of principles, based on the Benchmarking Code of Conduct adopted by the International Benchmarking Clearing House and the Strategic Planning Council, is as follows: 1. Principle of Legality: Avoid discussions or actions that could be considered or are, in fact, illegal. 2. Principle of Exchange: Be willing to provide the same type and level of information that you are asking others to provide. 3. Principle of Confidentiality: Never breech an agreement to protect proprietary or confidential information. Do not share the results of benchmarking information without prior permission of partners. 4. Principle of Use: Restrict your use of benchmarking information to the improvement of partnership organizations. Do not extend the results of one benchmarking study to another without the consent of each organization that participated in the original study. Chapter 2: Selecting Benchmarking Partners 38

5. Principle of First-Party Contact: Each benchmarking partner should designate a “first point of contact.” Exchange of information and interaction with others in the organization should begin with those contact points. 6. Principle of Third-Party Contact: Do not give out an individual’s name without his or her permission in response to a contact request, particularly in private firms. 7. Principle of Preparation: Show your commitment to the efficiency and effectiveness of the benchmarking process by being thoroughly prepared, especially when you initiate a contact with a partner. 8. Principle of Completion: Follow through in your commitments to a benchmarking process by sharing information about processes, offering to arrange reciprocal visits, and completing meetings and visits on time. Consider sharing study results. Benchmarking Agreements These principles are most likely to be followed if there is a formal agreement among benchmarking partners. A formal agreement clarifies the objective of the partnership and sets out the essential responsibilities of the partners. Generally, an oral agreement is not recommended unless the partners have strong mutual trust, have done benchmarking together before, and understand fully what is involved in producing and sharing information on performances and best practices. In general, each partner should sign a benchmarking agreement that addresses the points described here. Objective and Goals The agreement should set out the goals and objectives of customer-driven benchmarking. The objective should be to improve customer satisfaction and observable customer-oriented outcomes or to reduce the cost of delivering the product or service, or both. 39

Partners and Benchmarking Units The partnership agreement should list the name and address of each participating organization and a first point of contact with name, phone, and e-mail information. The agreement should also provide the number and unique identification of the benchmarking units that each partner offers for possible participation. This list can change if the level of the benchmarking unit changes or if a partner has reasons to drop or to add benchmarking units. Lead Partner and Roles The agreement should state which organization will serve as the lead organization and the name and contact information (address, phone, e-mail, and fax) for the individual who will coordinate the benchmarking activities of all the partners. The lead agency will be responsible for forging agreement with the partners on the following: ♦ Developing customer-oriented measures, ♦ Establishing procedures for data collection procedures, ♦ Ensuring measurement and data quality, ♦ Scheduling data collection, ♦ Formatting and sharing data, and ♦ Documenting and sharing practices of benchmarking units. Target Products, Services, Activities, and Business Processes The partnership agreement should identify products, services, activities, and business processes that are candidates for benchmarking. In general, the agreement should be flexible and should not specify precisely what will be benchmarked. However, in some situations, you will need to be specific in order to obtain agreement from your partners to participate. Roles and Responsibilities of Partners Above all, each partner has a responsibility to diligently build consensus on what performance measures to use, to collect Chapter 2: Selecting Benchmarking Partners 40

accurate data in accordance with agreed-upon performance measures, and to provide documentation on business processes. Each partner depends on the others in order to obtain meaningful results and to ensure that the benchmarking partnership succeeds. If too many partners shirk their responsibility, a large amount of time and effort for everyone involved will be wasted. In a small partnership, only one or two agencies failing to uphold their end is enough to undermine all the benefits of working together. Time Period The time period for the agreement must be defined. Recognize that if the partners are defining product or services, establishing measures, and collecting data for the first time, 1 year can easily pass before any measurements are taken and the performances of the benchmarking units are evaluated. A longer time period will be required if the partners want to go through more than one measurement cycle. Therefore, partners should be thinking in terms of agreements of 2 to 5 years. Common Measures There should be a clause in the agreement that says that parties to the agreement will use the same outcome, output, input, and external measures and will take the necessary steps to take the measurements, including collection of underlying data. The agreement should specify the general types of measures that will be used. There should be flexibility to change the measures as the benchmarking partners work together and become clearer regarding what to do. Data Quality The agreement needs to say that partners will abide by mutually agreed-upon procedures to ensure data and measurement quality. The agreement could leave these procedures open to future determination or could specify them. Examples include the accuracy and the confidence level of data and measurements. 41

Sharing Information on Performance The agreement should contain a clause stating that each participant agrees to sharing information on performance in terms of each of the following: ♦ Outcomes and outputs; ♦ Inputs (labor, equipment, material, and costs; financial information may be problematic for private firms); ♦ Levels of external factors; and ♦ Details of business processes associated with each performance. This clause might specify that partners agree to store information in a database having a particular format to facilitate exchanging information. The agreement could also specify other forms of information sharing—for example, willingness to complete a questionnaire or permit videotaping of operations. Confidentiality It is quite likely that potential partners will not participate in benchmarking unless there is confidentiality regarding sharing of data. The confidentiality clause might require that all results and data be attributed to organizations only by code, not by name. This is an important issue not only for private firms, but also for many public agencies that are reluctant to exchange information that could be used to compare performance unless they can be assured that the results of comparisons will not be made public. However, open record laws (e.g., freedom of information acts), may make it difficult to guarantee that public data gathered at taxpayer expense remains confidential. The confidentiality clause could specify that any database have security features that restrict different users from accessing various types of data and results. Some database users would have rights to create, update, and delete data. Others might have “read only” rights, while still others could be restricted to viewing only certain subsets of information. Chapter 2: Selecting Benchmarking Partners 42

Documentation There should be a provision in the agreement that requires benchmarking partners to document, for the consideration of others, any practices that are determined to be superior or best practices. The documentation might include the following: ♦ Sources of data on outputs, inputs, and external factors; ♦ Information on the reliability, accuracy, and repeatability of data and measurements; ♦ Raw and reduced data from systems that provide the data for benchmarking; ♦ Description of work methods that may exist; ♦ Existing procedural manuals; ♦ Business process flow charts prepared according to conventions agreed upon by the benchmarking partners; ♦ Training, education, and experience levels of labor; ♦ Vendor information regarding the materials and equipment used; and ♦ Costs (variable and overhead). (Note: some organizations may not be willing to provide cost data, and the benchmarking agreement should provide the flexibility to not do so. However, it may be impractical not to use cost data as a measure of the resources used. Furthermore, if products or services are sold, sharing of pricing or cost information could violate antitrust laws). Adding Benchmarking Partners The benchmarking agreement should allow additional partners to be added to the group, provided they agree to all the terms and conditions of the agreement. Resigning from the Partnership The agreement should set out the conditions under which a participant can resign from the benchmarking partnership. It is desirable for the agreement to state that each partner will satisfy its obligations under the benchmarking agreement as 43

long as it remains involved, but may leave the partnership at any time without cause. It is a mistake to include stringent exit procedures, because they will discourage potential partners from entering the agreement. Partners will remain involved as long as the partnership provides compelling benefits by showing organizations how they can improve performance as a result of adopting best practices. Sample Benchmarking Agreement Appendix A includes a sample agreement suitable for customer- driven benchmarking of road maintenance. ENROLLING BENCHMARKING UNITS IN EACH ORGANIZATION Once you have developed a benchmarking agreement with your partners, you need to recruit units within your agency to participate in benchmarking activities. Ideally, you will have taken this step before you signed the benchmarking agreement so that you have buy-in. Even so, you will have more to do to solidify the participation of the benchmarking units so that you can proceed to measure and analyze performance. By the time you sign a benchmarking agreement with your partners, you will probably know at what level of the organization you plan to benchmark and will have a general agreement to participate from the managers responsible for those organizational units. This understanding is more likely to have been reached at the middle and higher levels (e.g., garage level or higher) than at the crew level. You will need to fully engage the lower levels of the organization that are directly responsible for performing maintenance work. This is important because you will need to rely on work units to provide an accurate description of work methods, including labor, equipment and material used, as well as their role in the overall business processes of providing a maintenance product or service. In addition, you may need the cooperation of the work units in order to gather information not normally recorded in daily work reports, although crews should not be expected to collect data on outcomes. If there are possible barriers to engaging crews because of collective bargaining agreements, you may need to work with union representatives. Chapter 2: Selecting Benchmarking Partners 44

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TRB's National Cooperative Highway Research Program (NCHRP) Report 511: Guide for Customer-Driven Benchmarking of Maintenance Activities provides guidance on how to evaluate and improve an agency's performance through a process called "customer-driven benchmarking." The objective of benchmarking is to identify, evaluate, and implement best practices by comparing the performance of agencies.

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