PennDOT's Bureau of Public Transportation (BPT) is required to conduct compliance reviews on vehicles purchased with awarded Federal 5310 and 5311 funds on a regular basis. Staff have manually tracked the findings and due dates for these compliance reviews for years on a separate spreadsheet that has to be maintained and tracked separately from other systems BPT has in place.
Years ago, BPT developed a Capital Planning Tool (CPT) that is an asset tracking and planning system for vehicles and capital assets. Both transit agencies and Department staff have access to the CPT. We determined there to be value in housing all capital asset information in one location. Therefore, we have created a compliance section in the CPT.
The Compliance tool is essential to develop and track findings in our federally required compliance reviews for 5310 and 5311 reviews as well as our Shared Ride and Performance reviews. The system automatically generates letters such as notification, findings, action plans, and closeout letters. Findings are assigned due dates and the dates are automatically put on a calendar to notify BPT staff when follow-up is due. Since these schedules are dependent on a myriad of factors, the system factors in the parameters and notifies BPT when scheduled compliance reviews are due.
In the new compliance section, when a review of an agency starts, a review template is created for each individual agency. Each agency template houses that agency's information and documents:
- Maintenance Plans
- Title VI Plans
- Financial Management
- EEO Plans
- Agency Procurement Procedures
- ADA Policy
BPT can use this information to conduct its reviews and develop findings. Since Title VI Plans are required to be updated every three years and EEO Plans every four, templates are created for tracking the due dates for each system and put onto a master calendar to allow BPT staff to work with agencies to update plans on schedule to meet federal requirements. The master calendar will improve our efficiency when conducting reviews and ensure that we are not overburdening agencies with multiple reviews in a single year. Additionally, this will allow us to ensure all agencies are compliant and prepared if selected by the FTA for review during PennDOT's State Management Review.