Bureau of Reclamation

Lower Colorado Region

Yuma Area Office

Yuma Arizona

 

 

 

 


Arizona ABC Pilot

 

 

Pilot Report

April 25, 2003

Bureau of Reclamation

AZ ABC Pilot Report

Activity definition/outputs/measures

  1. Are there activities that generated no cost/workload data?  If yes, which were they.  Why did they generate no cost/workload data? 

           

            Unable to respond, the report generated to make this determination was not accurate.  Technical Support is checking into this.          

 

  1. Which activities, outputs, or workload measures need to be reworded so they make more sense to a field practitioner?  How would you reword them?

           

·        Indirect and direct charges for maintenance and planning activities need some clarification.

·        Had a difficult time matching activities to work performed at YAO.

 

  1. Which activities collected the most data?  Does it appear as though the activities were used as a "catchall" for other work that needs its own definition?  Or does the existing definition need clarification to indicate what's included and what's not?

 

            YAO work order breakdowns are much more detailed, i.e. surveying, design activities, procurement, environmental, etc. all cost associated with specific project.  Somehow, in order to be able to determine specific project costs, these all must be captured somewhere.  Need to provide broader breakdown of activities that capture our work activities.  BOR Activities are varied, and go from maintenance activities to major design and construction work.

 

            Indirect Planning was a catch all area.  General meetings on work specific meetings on projects and work on detailing work schedules and assignments all were charged here.  There was no way to separate out meetings of a general nature and work session detailing work schedules.  We plan and schedule for maintenance work but we do not do it in Operate facilities.  Work areas for other Bureaus was broken down much farther than for USBR.

 

            7R Annual Maintenance on Water Maintenance Facilities was used as a “catch all” area.  Primarily because it was difficult to find a good match to the activities performed at YAO.

           

 

  1. Is there any confusion over where to record time, e.g. blurring the distinction between activity definitions for two different activities?

           

            The major problem was trying to determine into which of the established categories work fit.   This goes back to question No. 3 where BOR needs to establish more activities and descriptions.

 

Training

  1. What areas/topics that were covered in the pilot training need to be clearer? Eliminated?  

           

·        More time should have been spent on reviewing the specific activities, the definitions, and the selection. 

·        The time spent on the overall philosophy about ABC could have been reduced.

·        Not enough time was spent on the use of the tracking tool.

·        It would have been very helpful if the definitions for the activities had been provided at the training.

·        Not enough time was spent reviewing the activities to determine which ones were applicable to the work done here.

·        Training personnel did not agree on interpretation of functions.  Disagreements among trainers should be avoided, i.e. there was a disagreement about the definition of Invasive species as a function and its activities.

 

 

  1. What was not covered that would have helped the pilot run more smoothly?

           

            Since the staff at the Yuma Area Office has been involved in the concept of direct charging, the staff believed that more ore time should have been spent on reviewing the definitions for each of the activities that were going to be tested.         

 

  1. If the training were put on a CD with specific training modules that you can go through at your leisure, would that have been more effective than traditional classroom training?

           

            It all depends who the audience is.  For trades and crafts people, I believe that the traditional classroom type training would be more beneficial.  For employees literate in computer use CD training should be okay.  One draw back to CD training or any type of on line training is that it takes away from the personal interaction that encourages questions and gives answers.

 

  1. If training was delivered on a CD, would you still require a "live" instructor or someone who would go to the field and provide some "hands-on" training on ABC?

           

            I suggest that all employees in the Department are surveyed to determine this.  Again for trades and crafts staff, the “hands-on” training will be more beneficial.  Some of them may not even be computer literate so providing them with a CD may not be of any help.

Logistics:

 

  1. For those of you whose participants did not have access to computers on a daily basis, did those individuals regularly take part in the pilot?  If so, how did they record their time and enter it into the AZ pilot software?

           

            The employees who did not have access to the computer participated indirectly.  Their time was entered by a person designated in the office and who regularly enters time for them.

 

            Currently at the Yuma Area Office, most trades and crafts staff don’t enter their time to the automated time and attendance system.  Their time is entered by a clerk in their office.  This same process was used for the Pilot.