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9 CHAPTER 4 Project Approach The project team had encountered early skepticism about successfully achieving the project objectives and a resultant resistance from stakeholders during the initial research project, the skepticism being understandable based on the contentious nature of historical relationships between some transportation agencies and railroads. During the course of the research project, the project team worked closely with members of several Class I railroads and state transportation agencies. Team members also completed extensive research, conducted surveys, and held multiple meetings to understand the challenges as well as the background to the workings between the two parties. Over the research period, with good project management, constant communication, a balanced perspective, and quality deliverables, team members developed a good professional relationship with many of the stakeholders. Team members also recognized, among the stakeholders, the need and desire (and of course, the constraints) for establishing a cooperative environment which could lead to long-term, sustainable solutions for expediting the delivery of railroadâDOT projects. This allowed team members to implement a strategy to effectuate significant progress toward establishing the spirit of cooperation. During the communication and dissemination project, the team implemented an approach to build on the trust and collaboration that had been initiated earlier. Members for the projectâs community of interest and champion-pairs were recruited in such a manner as to facilitate the long-term success of the project objectives. The approach was thus to create an environment where the members of the community of interest benefitted from the discussions, were vested in the success of the project, and became initial champions who were willing to implement the various innovations. Through the process of communicating the details of the innovations, together with support from the COI members at various national and regional forums, the StarIsis team sought to expand the list of stakeholders to champion the implementation of various project innovations. The innovation adoption process model shown in Figure 4.1 identifies the successful national adoption of innovations occurring when between 10 to 15 percent of users adopt the innovation. This is also referred to as the tipping point. The project team worked collaboratively with the COI to initiate the next steps and move the testing and adoption of project innovations from innovators to the tipping point.
10 Figure 4.1. Innovation adoption process model. By creating an environment conducive for discussions, the team engaged the COI to champion the dissemination and to use several of the project innovations. The collaboration resulted in the COI stakeholders advocating the adoption of the innovations to peers. The COI members also got the project discussion on the agenda of various conferences and meetings. This report discusses the strategies that were successfully used and the framework that was created in collaboration with this first-of-its-kind community of stakeholders. The report recommends a framework to catalyze widespread adoption of the innovations nationally. Additionally, since local agencies work closely with state agencies on railroad projects, the success at the state level can also be replicated to address the challenges of local agency rail projects. This would mean the adoption of the innovations by multiple tiers at state and local levels nationally.
