Safety Clothing and Equipment Catalog on ADOT’s Intranet

Company Information: Highest Ranking Official: Victor Mendez, Director

Contact Person:
Sonya Herrera
Safety Administrator, ADOT Safety & Health Office
(602) 712-7745 sherrera@azdot.gov

Type of work:
ADOT Safety & Health is responsible for ensuring ADOT employees have a safe and healthful work environment. We develop safety policies, identify and approve appropriate safety apparel and equipment, audit work sites, and develop and deliver safety training statewide.

Workforce: 10 employees

Safety Clothing and Equipment Online Catalog

Testimonial of Value of Arizona State Quality Awards Program

“The Arizona Department of Transportation Safety and Health Office has benefited from the AQA award process. In preparing our application, we did a follow up survey and our customers confirmed that our catalog continued to be a valuable tool in the procurement process. As a part of the survey we also received recommendations to further enhance the usefulness of the catalog, which we immediately implemented. The auditors’ feedback report also identified some opportunities for improvement that we will work to incorporate.” Sonya Herrera, Safety Administrator

Highlights of Organizational Process:

Available on the ADOT intranet, ADOT’s Safety Clothing & Equipment Catalog has increased our ability to provide ADOT’s 4600+ employees with easy access to contracted safety items. This catalog improved our ability to provide our customers with ANSI compliant clothing and equipment.

We are always looking for ways to more efficiently utilize our resources. Internet-based technologies have been a tremendous asset, enabling us to provide quality service to our customers, while allowing our employees to work on other safety issues.

In December of 2001, the Safety & Health Office established a strategic objective: bring ADOT into compliance with the ANSI 107-1999 Standard for High Visibility Clothing. The Safety & Health Office and its Safety Clothing Committee (SCC) conducted a needs assessment of ADOT’s safety clothing acquisition process. We identified elements in this process that needed improvement:

The SCC surveyed users to determine the safety equipment environment and what actions would be necessary to attain compliance. Some of the findings were:

• Users were not aware of what clothing and equipment was on contract. Copies of the contracts were not readily available to the users outside metropolitan areas.

• The ordering process was confusing resulting in wasted time and money.

The SCC reviewed the current ADOT procurement contract specifications regarding ANSI compliant garments. Some of the findings were:

• Vendor catalogs did not correlate, verbally or visually, with ADOT specified or approved equipment.
• Returns or exchanges for incorrect purchases required significant time and paperwork therefore were very expensive.

The SCC interviewed potential buyers from each of our user groups as well as vendors that provide products to our agency. Input was also solicited from the Procurement Office and division stakeholders.

• Users needed a single source, “one-stop-shopping,” to help them determine the following: items approved for purchase, approved vendors, visual and background information on the items, and related guidelines.
• Users felt the process was time consuming and confusing, which made it difficult to purchasing appropriate safety clothing and equipment.

Safety audits of work areas revealed:

• The purchase of unapproved safety equipment was common and often a result of the confusing process that was in place at the time.
• Many employees were unaware that safety products were on contract.

Safety & Health Office established four goals based on the needs assessment: (1) redesign ADOT’s current safety clothing and equipment specifications to meet ANSI standards (2) amend and/or establish new safety clothing contracts to include ADOT’s revised specifications, (3) develop a user-friendly, point-of-purchase on-line portal that would educate, motivate and facilitate ADOT personnel’s purchase of ANSI compliant garments; the Safety Clothing & Equipment Catalog, and (4) monitor the use of the new clothing and equipment on-line catalog.

We felt that the intranet would provide the best environment for a “one stop shopping environment” that we were trying to achieve. Our task here was to provide a tool that could be accessed by all employees and could be easily updated with the most current product information.

By employing user testing throughout the design, we were able to minimize development time and create a user-friendly interface that increased our ability to attract and retain users. With support from ITG programmer, Cyndi Striegler, the catalog became available on ADOT’s Safety and Health Intranet web site in May of 2003. Employee enthusiasm for the on-line catalog was immediate. “Item photos are WONDERFUL! Before, we didn’t always know what we were getting”. Customer

Additional benefits from the applied solution include:

Single Source Portal Benefits:

• Reduces time spent researching requirements, compiling and processing orders
• Increased purchase order accuracy, which reduces the number of exchanges and returns

End User Benefits:

• Enables end users to comply with ADOT requirements, policies and procedures
• Safety equipment is readily available, reducing accidents and dollars spent on workers compensation claims and the equipment meets ADOT and ANSI specifications.

Improved Procurement Process:

• Contract officers see the items they are managing and better understand the customers’ needs and the number of inquiries regarding what items are on contract was significantly reduced.

Safety & Health Section Benefits:

• The number of calls to Procurement and the Safety Office were reduced by approximately 99%.
• The efficiency of the ordering process enables the staff to focus on other safety issues.