Planning – Evaluation – Analysis – Knowledge
These are more than four words; these are the key elements that keep VCPWA striving to operate at its highest level. The PEAK program, created in January 2019, oversees and coordinates agency wide leadership of continuous process improvement initiatives, manages the agency’s strategic planning processes and leads the internal organizational performance reviews and reporting efforts. The program aims to capture the momentum and energy that staff have created these past few years as it applies to refining our services.
What does all this mean and how does it impact PWA staff?
To realize the VCPWA Vision of being the regional leader as well as provider of public works services and the mission to perform efficiently and cost-effectively, it is critical to look at how we conduct business. Our customer’s expectations are changing with the use of social media and the desire for quick turnaround service. Additionally, technology continues to evolve rapidly providing innovative ways to perform our jobs. To keep pace with the changing times and remain a front runner, we must look internally to determine steps we can take to meet these challenges. This is where a focus on process improvement comes into play.
Every day, PWA staff make decisions that affect how our work is done. Improving processes often happens naturally; you identify what needs to be done and you do it. The PEAK program helps put a formal process to capture all these great achievements that happen daily while, at the same time, helping agency management look beyond the grass-roots level improvements to direct attention to high-level processes with a wider, long-range, customer service impact. This will help the agency move to the next level, or peak, on our journey upwards towards excellence.
