The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority is the third-largest public transportation system in the U.S. After two decades of extreme traffic congestion in their city, LA County residents voted to approve tax initiative Measure R, which would commit $40 billion for traffic relief and transportation upgrades over the next 30 years.
Measure R was the largest investment in Los Angeles County transportation infrastructure since the 1980s and would provide an estimated 210,000 new construction jobs. The program would be responsible for the expansion of the rail network to include airport connections, the addition of carpool lanes and freeway connectors, funding local street improvements and more.
LA Metro was scaled for delivery of only one to two major projects at a time. However, the delivery strategy for Measure R assumed that four to five major projects would be executed concurrently. Add to this the increased expectation for quicker project deliverability, and it was clear the agency needed a system that would help successfully manage a program of this size.
LA Metro decided to implement an enterprise-wide, web-based program management information system, inclusive of capital planning and staffing analysis. It used Sequence Enterprise (formerly EcoSys) as the program’s central hub and created an integration, reporting and analysis platform to address the demand for greater cost accountability and reporting.
Challenges
Project control systems were structured around outdated technologies
Enterprise-wide summary data was unavailable for project cost or schedule performance
Departmental silos of information were persistent, and data was not shared or available
Manual and redundant business processes were utilized for cost forecasting
Progress reports for management were not available until three to four weeks after the end of each financial period
Accounting data for actual expenditures, budgets and commitments was cumbersome and not integrated with any other systems
Solutions
Sequence Enterprise was used as the cost management and reporting hub, integrating budget, schedule, resource and commitment systems including Oracle® Primavera P6
It standardized project structures, milestones and coding to allow for easy comparisons against actual performance
It allowed for the automation of data sharing of actuals, budgets and schedules to eliminate manual and duplicate data entry
It provided role-based dashboards via the web for managers and stakeholders to access real-time project and program performance, current status and forecast trends
It delivered visibility into labor resource needs and imbalances, and thus gave the control to shift resources as needed
Benefits
A “single version of the truth” for project and program information
End-to-end visibility with automated roll-ups of project status data to quickly and easily report on overall program performance
Improved data quality and security thanks to version control and an audit trail
The ability to receive project status reports immediately
Improved staff efficiencies from reduced manual logging, compilation and redundant data entry
Process standardization of standard reports, business rule enforcement of data and ultimately identified and elimination of inconsistencies
Immediate visibility into project performance, facilitating better project management and control
Confidence in Sequence Enterprise project data allows full transparency to taxpayers via public web portal that breaks down allocation of funds and status of active rail projects
Through its use of Sequence Enterprise, LA Metro has realized a major increase in its capabilities for project and program management and is better able to deliver on the Measure R timelines. Use of Sequence Enterprise will now be extended to other capital programs beyond railway projects, and LA Metro and Sequence Enterprise are working together to systematically develop in-house application expertise at the agency.
