| About Us |
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| Background Information |
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The Quality Assurance unit provides the following services:
- Coordinates Quality Assurance reviews
- Provides comments and feedback to Design Providers to improve future designs
- Provides training and advice on Design Quality Control programs
The design quality program has recently been developed as a formal program. Over the many years of design development ODOT has managed design quality in a fashion typical of other DOT’s. That has been a practice of internal design team peer reviews, typically at the 30, 60 and 90 percent design development stage. This practice was successful over many years due to several key factors:
- Strong centrally managed design teams.
- A long history of developing designers internally, some of who progressed into management oversight positions.
- Projects were designed internally with strong internal management oversight.
- A conservative approach to standards, policies, production standards and design innovations.
- Elements of design production were arranged in a repetitive assembly line fashion.
In the course of the past couple of years ODOT’s increasing construction program has caused it to re examine its approach to design production. With a goal of limited agency staffing the logical direction of greater consultant utilization was chosen. This direction has witnessed a progression from at first partial design outsourcing to ever-greater levels until finally arriving at full project design outsourcing.
Concurrent with program growth, increased percentages of total design volume are shifting to consultant delivery. By the 2006 to 2008 program years consultant deliver, is forecasted to be about 70 to 80% of the total design volume. Overlaying this is the movement of internal production design resources from a central to a de-centralized structure.
The combination of changes currently results in nearly 100% of the design volume delivered by non-central providers, with only 20 to 30 percent employed by the agency at decentralized offices. This rapid change in design sources has caused the agency to embark on the development of a Design Quality Program.
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| Organizational Chart |
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Quality Assurance for Design is part of the Office of Project Letting (OPL) Unit, which is a part of the Technical Services Branch, Traffic-Roadway Section.
The following link is provided to help you better understand the organization structure of QA within OPL.
 Organizational Chart
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