Worker Presence Subgroup Meeting #3, 2021 01 13

January 13, 2021

Attendees:

• Austin Transportation Department - Luke Urie
• Bentley Systems - Lee Jackson
• Booz Allen Hamilton - Mahsa Ettefagh
• Castle Rock Associates - Kristin Virshbo
• City of Houston - Fabio Capillo
• FHWA - Martha Kapitanov
• GEWI - Eli Sherer
• HERE Technologies - Weimin Huang
• IBI Group - Jacob Brady
• IBI Group - Michelle Boucher
• iCone - Ross Sheckler
• Panasonic - Lauren Cordova
• Panasonic - Ryan Blake
• RIITS - Kali Fogel
• Ver-Mac - Serge Beaudry
• USDOT Bureau of Transportation Statistics - Kenneth Steve
• USDOT Volpe Center - Molly Behan
• USDOT Volpe Center - Mark Mockett
• USDOT Volpe Center - Nate Deshmukh Towery
• USDOT Volpe Center - Wesley Alford
• WSDOT - Tony Leingang

Purpose:

• Present results from the Worker Presence Survey responses
• Discuss takeaways from the survey responses

Agenda:

• Sign-in and Welcome
• Survey Goals and Method Overview
• Survey Results
• Analysis
• Next Steps

Notes

Survey Goals and Method Overview:

• The co-chairs wanted to look at the current state of practice of tracking human presence in work zones. We published an online survey to pose those questions to the stakeholder community.
  • Co-chairs identified four groups that we wanted to hear from: infrastructure owner operators, equipment providers, workers, and data consumers.
  • The subgroup developed a survey with four tracks to ask specific questions of the four groups. Conducted via SurveyMonkey from July 13 until September 2.
• 537 responses, after cleaning out duplicates
  • 220 responses to Track A – Infrastructure Owner Operator
  • 23 responses to Track B – Equipment Providers
  • 68 responses to Track C – Workers
  • 78 from Track D – Data Consumers
  • 148 people who didn't fit in to the first four groups
• Survey received a huge response from WSDOT:
  • 97 responses to Track A – IOO
  • 47 responses to Track C – Work Zone Workers
  • Exciting to get so many responses from a single organization, but we sorted out the WSDOT response to avoid skewing our sample.

Survey Results and Takeaways

Track A – Infrastructure Owner Operator

• Jurisdictions are at varying levels of adoption of work zone tracking.
  • 70% of respondents reported tracking planned work zones
  • 50% of respondents reported tracking active work zones
  • 5% of respondents reported tracking worker presence in work zones
    • Not prioritizing, technology gaps, and budget constraints are main reasons given for not tracking worker presence
• Wanted to look into whether having a definition of worker presence impacted whether a jurisdiction had set up a worker presence tracking system.
  • Respondents were split as to whether they had a definition
  • Not having a system for tracking planned work zones didn't appear to hinder tracking worker presence.
  • Having a definition may impact coverage, i.e. preventing the capture of 100% of worker presence activity.
• The most commonly used worker presence technologies in IOO’s worker presence tracking systems were:
  • Worker check-in/check-out system – the most widely used, but might not meet the timeliness/accuracy desired by data consumers.
  • Camera monitoring – hard to deploy everywhere
  • Smart equipment – workers are reluctant to use GPS-enabled equipment
• There is not a whole lot of overlap in the goals of IOOs tracking worker presence and of the WZDx initiative.
  • IOOs track worker presence for managing contracts with field workers, making sure IOOs know what's happening on their roadways, and publishing info on 511
  • Lowest ranking reasons were CAV pilots, in-vehicle displays, and sharing data with 3rd party consumers.

Track B – Work Zone Equipment Provider

• 6 vendors responded that they offer systems for tracking worker presence
  • 4 original manufacturers
  • 2 companies integrating solutions from different manufacturers
• The market is in the "early adopter" phase, with not a lot of uniformity in technology, possibly depending on the dfferent use cases that IOOs are interested in. Vendor systems use different technologies:
  • All 6 use GPS-enabled equipment
  • 2 vendors use worker check-in/check-out (smartphone or other)
  • 1 vendor use camera monitoring
  • 1 vendor use variable speed limit signs
  • 1 vendor use flagging batons
• On the equipment vendor and IOO tracks, we asked about privacy, ethics, and liability concerns.
  • 25% of respondents on IOO track had some concern about liability.
  • Equipment vendors largely did not have privacy, ethics, or liability concerns.
  • Work zone workers were generally less comfortable wearing GPS tracking due to privacy concerns.

Track C – Work Zone Worker

• We asked workers how comfortable they would be using different types of technology to report their presence
  • 80% were comfortable using phone/radio to report their presence.
  • Fewer were comfortable using GPS and more automation
• Important in the future to make a distinction between reasons for tracking work zones. Most IOOs seem to want to know whether someone is there, not track every person.

Track D – Work Zone Data Consumer

• A slight majority of respondents do not currently use work zone data but are interested in doing so.
• Respondents were generally interested in all types of work zone activities, but most interested in highways.
• Majority of respondents would be satisfied with 15-minute to 5-minute update.
• A large amount of respondents didn't know what tolerance would be acceptable for timeliness or spatial accuracy.

Questions

• Was there any conversation with public information officers? Often those are the people talking to the presence about worker presence and they work directly with contractors.
  • The co-chairs did not specifically reach out to PIOs as part of this effort. We were thinking more from an operations perspective, about how to capture worker presence info and include it in data feeds. That group may play a role in clarifying confusion or different understandings about why worker presence info is important.
• Some states have worker presence laws for their states. How many states have, by law, a definition of worker presence? Virginia has a law for speeding when workers are present, referring to construction and maintenance. FHWA usually refers to work zones as including construction, maintenance, and utility work. For states with a definition, how are they using that terminology? If WZDx will use a definition of “workers present,” we want to be consistent.
• I've heard about contractor concerns about liability and automated systems. Are we looking into a definition of work zones (i.e. first sign to last sign)? If so, how do we include workers setting up traffic control, either before the first equipment goes down or after the last
  • We did get a taste of the different definitions out there. One state assumes that workers are always present if equipment is present. Having an understanding of those different definitions could be useful, but having a common definition would be tough.