Caltrans earned the SAVE International Gordon Frank Award for using innovative business solutions to improve processes to better serve the public. Photo by Caltrans Innovative Business Solutions 
By Troy Tusup
Innovative Business Solutions Chief
SAVE International presented Caltrans’ Office of Innovative Business Solutions the Gordon Frank Award for Outstanding Accomplishment in Government and nationally recognized Caltrans’ process improvement program within the Caltrans Director’s Office of Innovation, Risk, and Strategic Management.
The award is named after Gordon Frank, who was one of five civilians recruited in 1964 to become one of 10 technical members of the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) Value Engineering Services Office. The office expanded the use of Value Engineering throughout military departments and defense agencies. Frank led policy and operational changes that allowed contractors to share their Value Engineering activity benefits with their government customers. He also managed the use of value techniques in design-to-cost, should-cost, and more. He became director of the DoD’s Total Quality Management Office before retiring to teach at universities in the Washington, D.C. area.
The Caltrans Innovative Business Solutions program incorporates Value Analysis (VA) and Lean 6 Sigma (L6S) to improve business processes. The Innovative Business Solutions team is a resource to managers and supervisors to help eliminate wait time, rework, and errors. These efficiencies improve processes and employee satisfaction, minimizing process fatigue while meeting Caltrans’ strategic goals.
When Caltrans’ Strategic Plan for 2015-2020 was released, many division and district executive teams used Innovative Business Solutions to align their activities with the overall Caltrans mission, vision, and goals. District and program leadership realized the value in aligning, and sometimes reorganizing, their organizational structure to support Caltrans in becoming a performance-driven organization. By constructing their own business plans and activities, district and program executive staff monitor how they are performing and identify how to address deficiencies.
Strategic planning is a process to define an organizations desired future state and sets priorities to focus resources on what is most important. Clearly identifying the functions of an organization’s people, products and processes and illustrating the underlying logic of their relationship to one another is important in strategic planning.
Innovative Business Solutions continues to help supervisors and managers throughout Caltrans to solve problems, become more productive, improve quality, engage and retain staff, and support succession planning through innovative uses of VA and L6S methodologies. For more information out more about Innovative Business Solutions visit https://innovation.onramp.dot.ca.gov/innovative-business-solutions.