Innovation Description and Benefit:

The STIP is a vital part of MoDOT’s project delivery process. While much of the work that goes into developing the STIP on an annual basis is done by District staff, there is a significant effort undertaken by the Statewide Programming group in Transportation Planning Division to review the project data for consistency across the state and alignment with the style and programming guidance issued to the Districts. The STIP Information Management System (SIMS) has several validation features built-in to make sure basic programming rules are followed, but there are many ways data can still be entered incorrectly that are not feasible to build into SIMS. Previously, the Statewide Programming group relied on its team members to manually review each of the 2,000+ projects in the STIP (including scoping) and try to find any of a myriad of potential issues submitted project data could have. The STIP Error Checking Reports is a collection of 30+ reports built in Cognos that make this effort a lot more thorough and helps the Statewide Programming group catch many errors that were previously overlooked during manual reviews. These reports check for common issues with the project description, look for common problems with specific project types, and flag projects that may have issues for manual review by staff. These reports are used during project reviews to greatly streamline the process and to help ensure greater data quality and consistency. There is also a SharePoint page with detailed explanations of what each report checks for.