Peer Review for Public Agencies
Introduction to the Peer Review Program
Objective
The objective of the ASCE Peer Review for Public Agencies Program is to give public sector engineering, construction, and operations agencies a means to improve the management and quality of their services and thus better protect the public health and safety with which they are entrusted. Peer review is applicable to public agencies of any size, mission, discipline, responsibility, or location that provide an engineered product. Its benefits are useful to all agencies; and many of the benefits are also applicable to the infrastructure related branches of larger agencies.
The peer review program is designed to send an outside team of top level engineering managers into a public sector agency to evaluate its programs and operating procedures, and to critique the effectiveness of its policies and procedures on the production of a quality product. It seeks to raise the level of both management and technical practice by examining an agency's mission, objectives, policies, and procedures and then investigating its compliance with these policies and procedures to determine any shortcomings. Peer review does not analyze the technical competence of an agency or its individuals; that is left to the agency. The program maintains the principles of volunteerism and confidentiality.
Scope
For an agency to provide high quality engineered services on a long term basis, it must be strong in areas other than technical competence and production tools. Emphasis on realistic goals, efficient administration, quality assurance/quality control, public/user satisfaction, project monitoring, design/construction interaction, and an overall sense of direction are equally important.
To assess an agency's objectives and policies, the peer review team first studies documents furnished by the agency which define the agency's perception of its management and describe technical practice policies and procedures. The team then visits the agency to conduct confidential employee interviews inquiring into areas such as general management, development and maintenance of technical competence, project and resource management, and to assess if its objectives and policies are clearly understood and are being uniformly implemented.
When the review process is completed, the peer review team presents its findings, via an oral report, of their analysis of the organization's strengths and opportunities for improvement to the Engineer/Director (E/D) of the agency or his/her designee, and at the E/D's request, a written report summarizing the findings. Peer review is a "professional" review and is not to be confused with audits or investigations for regulatory purposes. Consequently, the peer review team will destroy all records at the conclusion of the review and tape recordings are not allowed. The peer review team will not discuss results with any other agency or the parent agency. Since the program is entirely voluntary, it is up to the Engineer/Director to decide what action, if any, to take in response to the report.
Philosophy
Peer Review of Public Agencies is one of ASCE's programs to assure the ongoing enhancement of leadership/management techniques in the public sector. The peer review process evaluates an agency's management services to aid the agency in producing a culture that strives to satisfy the ultimate user (the customer) of the finished product.
The primary tenets of continuous quality improvement imperative to the operation of public agencies are:
1. to build all efforts around delivering quality to the customer;
2. to define customer required products and services, to continually measure performance against requirements, and to provide frequent feedback to employees;
3. to stress prevention versus rework;
4. to emphasize teamwork at all levels;
5. to emphasize supervisory assistance to employees to achieve and grow versus supervisory control;
6. to emphasize continuing education;
7. to measure both work processes and results to see where problems lie;
8. to empower employees to solve these problems;
9. to continuously improve the system of production and services.
Cost
The cost of a peer review depends on the number of staff that the agency employs. The staff size, in turn, determines the number of days of the peer review and the size of the peer review team. The fee ranges from $5,000 to $15,000.
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