The determination of the customer needs and expectations of the Texas Department of Transportation construction operations

Abstract

This thesis presents the development of a Total Quality Management model to identify, the customer needs and expectations of the Texas Department of Transportation (TXDOT) construction operations. The established mission and goals of the TXDOT have provided a basis for improving work operations throughout the organization. Significant challenges face the senior management team of TXDOT as they attempt to lead and direct the necessary changes and improvements that will ensure organizational effectiveness. Currently, the Department is developing a mechanism for implementing these changes in the form of "Continuous Improvement," the Department's Total Quality Management program, and "Retooling" TXDOT, which incorporates the dynamic concepts of reengineering. Tracking the numerous operations within the Texas Department of Transportation composed of nearly 15,000 employees, requires some form of process mapping. The Department must guard against suboptimizing particular processes within TXDOT and thereby missing improvement opportunities on the whole TXDOT system. Process mapping This study proposes a Total Quality Management model that focuses on the project development process. Within the project process the construction subprocess is highlighted in order to identify all customers impacted by TXDOT construction operations. One of the expected outcomes of this research is a continuous improvement model that can be applied to the TXDOT construction operations as well as other processes within the TXDOT system. allows the identification of the various TXDOT processes along with their interrelationships. From the process diagrams all customers can now be identified that are impacted by the TXDOT system including the internal customers who sometimes are excluded from the organization's customer satisfaction list.