Report 2010-122 Recommendation 5 Responses

Report 2010-122: California Department of Transportation: Its Capital Outlay Support Program Should Strengthen Budgeting Practices, Refine Its Performance Measures, and Improve Internal Controls (Release Date: April 2011)

Recommendation #5 To: Transportation, Department of

To ensure that it monitors the status of projects, Caltrans should implement earned value management throughout its districts in a manner similar to the implementation in the Los Angeles district. To allow for performance evaluation of project work, Caltrans should ensure that these performance metrics are available at the task level for both active and completed projects. Caltrans should instruct districts to aggregate this information for all projects by task level, to better assess the effectiveness and efficiency of support costs by task level. Caltrans should also make available to project managers graphical displays of project cost and schedule performance.

Annual Follow-Up Agency Response From October 2013

Caltrans determined that full implementation of earned value management was contingent on the roll-out of the PRSM application. PRSM will provide earned value metrics and report at the task level for all projects in the system. The date for a complete roll-out of PRSM moved from June 2013 to September 2013 due to technical and training issues during the early district roll-out. Roll-out of PRSM was completed on August 29, 2013.

California State Auditor's Assessment of Annual Follow-Up Status: Fully Implemented

Caltrans' PRSM system is capable of generating information on earned value metrics such as a cost performance index and a schedule performance index. Further, Caltrans issued a directive to project delivery employees indicating that earned value management is a tool to manage projects' costs and schedules. The directive defines various earned value management terms and outlines who has responsibility for various elements of implementation.

Annual Follow-Up Agency Response From October 2012

As noted in Caltrans' one-year response, a Project Delivery Directive (PD-08) on Earned Value Management (EVM) was issued on April 5, 2012. PD-08 provided staff with a framework in terms of policy, definitions, roles and responsibilities for consistent implementation of EVM. Full implementation of EVM is contingent on the roll-out of the Project Resource and Schedule Management (PRSM) application which will provide earned value metrics and reports at the task level for all projects in the system. Caltrans is on track for a complete roll-out of PRSM by June 2013. Currently, Caltrans utilizes reports which graphically depict cost and schedule performance for all projects.

California State Auditor's Assessment of Annual Follow-Up Status: Not Fully Implemented

All Recommendations in 2010-122

Agency responses received after June 2013 are posted verbatim.