Comprehensive Human Factors Guidelines for Road Systems (Web-Only Document) (2005)

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APPENDIX A HFG WORK PLAN A-1

1.0 Work Plan for Developing the HFG This section provides a work plan for developing the document Comprehensive Human Factors Guidelines for Road Systems (“HFG”). This work plan was developed under Task 3 of NCHRP Project 17-18(8), Comprehensive Human Factors Guidelines for Road Systems. The purpose of the project was to establish a basis for the subsequent development of a guidance reference document on human factors, for use by highway designers and traffic engineers. The work plan presented here is taken from the project Task 4 report (November 2002), with minor editorial changes. The work plan considers the activities and effort that will be required to develop a first edition of the HFG. The plan addresses this in two sections. Section 2.0 deals with the process of document development and is structured around a flow chart of activities. Section 3.0 then provides order-of-magnitude estimates of the level of effort, schedule, and costs involved in working to the plan shown in Section 2.0. These estimates are acknowledged to be very rough and are only for purposes of providing a general sense of the scale of effort. 2.0 Required Activities, Roles, and Outside Interactions Figure 1 below summarizes the project tasks, internal coordination activities, and cooperation with outside groups that are required in producing the HFG. This chart represents the product of several iterations in defining the work structure and it is consistent with the “model” of the HFG described in the project Task 2 report. Consistent with that model, the effort is not seen as the production of a set of more-or- less independent chapters. Rather, there is a significant effort to integrate the individual chapter guidelines, both within the document and externally to the key design reference sources. The figure is organized into three columns. The center column shows the activity of the central “Technical and Editorial Coordination” provider. The right column shows the activity of the individual chapter authors. The left column shows the activity of outside reviewers and collaborators at various points in the project. The arrows show the flow of activity between these various entities and from one task to the next. Vertically, the chart shows the sequence of activity (from top to bottom), conceptually divided into five major segments: I. Document Structure and Preparation II. Chapter Structure III. Chapter Writing IV. Integration and Media V. Document Evaluation and Production A-2

Figure 1. HFG development tasks, internal coordination activities, and external cooperative and review activities A-3

As noted at the top of the figure, the starting point for the work plan begins with the output of NCHRP 17-18(8). That means there will be an outline, general conception of the document and its medium, and a sample chapter. It is expected that the sample chapter that emerges from 17-18(8) will undergo review and critique from a wide range of sources, so that the format may be subject to revision as the plans for the HFG are put in place. The three columns of the chart represent three broad spheres of activity. The coordinating and editing role (center column) is critical to the assumption of an interactive document that links key sections and concepts within the HFG. Since the individual chapters must be closely linked and mutually supportive, non-redundant, and supportive of a holistic, or “system,” view of roadway safety and driver performance, this central coordinating function is very much part of the “writing” process. The types of experts required under this column include editors and technical writers, content experts in highway safety, multi-media and graphics specialists, illustrators, and programmers. The right column of the chart shows the activities of the chapter authors. There are two primary written documents. Initially there is a literature review that produces a critical overview of the technical basis underlying the guidelines. Later, there is the HFG chapter itself, in a standard format, providing specific guidance. Notice there are various collaborative demands on chapter authors. The chapters will be subject to outside review from the Joint Subcommittee, relevant TRB committees, and others at various points, and chapter authors will have to be responsive to these stakeholders and interested parties. Furthermore, because of the integrated nature of the document, the author’s work does not end with submission of the chapter; after that point, the various authors, working with the editorial providers, are kept in the process at specific interaction points as the chapters mutually evolve. It should therefore be recognized that the effort required of chapter authors will be somewhat greater than if they were simply writing stand-alone chapters for a less interactive document. Authors will also have to work collaboratively with the editorial coordinators to develop appropriate graphics and animations. The assumption is that planning, designing, and programming illustrations, animations, video, etc. will housed with the technical and editorial function, and not the responsibility of the chapter author. The chapter author proposes the graphics and multimedia features, and the editorial group coordinates and executes them. The left column of the figure shows the outside collaboration and review. As the figure makes evident, the HFG development process is “open” and subject to comment from a variety of sources at a variety of times. The outside review include such groups as TRB technical committees, the Joint Subcommittee, AASHTO, parallel projects (especially European efforts also growing out of the Joint Subcommittee), expert reviewers, and potential HFG users. Moving vertically down the chart, the five major activities are shown. Within each, the boxes of the flow diagram show the specific tasks to be done by the coordinators, authors, and reviewers. The arrows show the flow of activity and information between tasks and entities. The initial set of tasks (Document Structure and Preparation) provide A-4

the basis for everything that needs to be done prior to the chapter authors actually starting their work. This includes detailed functional specifications and authors guides, phasing and coordination plans, selection of chapter authors, and putting in place of formal agreements. The workplan does not specify precisely how authors will be selected. For example, it could be through competitive procurements or it might be through selection of invited authors. This selection could be done by TRB via NCHRP, by TRB committees, by whatever organization has “ownership” of the HFG, or by the organization that holds the technical and editorial coordination role. However this is done, the work plan shows that it is important to include outside advice from key organizations and stakeholders The second major set of tasks is labeled Chapter Structure. It is under this activity that the chapter authors conduct their literature reviews, develop an outline of their HFG chapter, and indicate the set of specific guideline topics they foresee within the chapter. At this point, the chapter authors then must work collaboratively with the editorial coordinator and the other authors, in order to make sure that the individual chapters function together in a complementary manner and are not redundant. The third set of activities in the chart comprise Chapter Writing. The individual HFG chapters are written, reviewed, and revised. Needs for illustrations and multimedia are generated and coordinated, and story boarding of the layout and development of the multimedia components is done. Appropriate permissions for re-publishing figures and graphics are obtained. In the Integration and Media stage, major central editing activities take place. Graphics and media are developed. Prototype chapters are produced. Integration and editing of all of the chapters is done. Hypertext links and keyword indexing are done. During this work, outside experts will review the individual chapters. Individual authors will review the integrated document. This provides them an opportunity to make sure that the interactive aspects and relation of their chapter to other chapters is appropriate. It also allows them to see and comment on any other editorial changes made to their sections. The final phase is document evaluation and production. A Beta version of the HFG is produced and subjected to usability testing. We feel that it is very important that typical users (rather than content experts) try working with the HFG before it is finalized. Any changes required based on usability testing or author review will be incorporated into the master document, which can then be duplicated and released. At the bottom of the chart, we have tried to show that there should be some ongoing process for getting user feedback and improving the HFG. One unresolved issue at this point is the phased nature of developing the HFG. As envisioned, the HFG will have 21 chapters when the first edition is complete. Because of the extensive editorial and technical coordination required, as well as outside review, it would be most efficient if all of the chapters were written and integrated at the same time. However, given the scale of this effort, resources likely will not be available to do everything in one effort. Therefore, development of the HFG will have to be phased. A-5

The more chapters per phase, and fewer phases, required, the more efficient the development process will be. Also, the more chapters developed in the initial phase, the more useable the first phase HFG will be, given the linking between chapters. 3.0 Estimated Effort and Time In order to generate some initial estimates of effort and time, we had to make some assumptions about the phasing of HFG development. As noted just above, developing all of the chapters at one time would be most efficient, but is unlikely. The working assumption for the estimates of effort was that the first edition of the HFG would be accomplished in three phases, each comprised of about six technical chapters. Table 1 provides a breakdown of the estimated level of effort for various categories of personnel. The tasks shown in the table correspond to the various rows of boxes in Figure 1. For example, in the first work phase of the figure (Document Structure and Preparation), there are five rows of boxes. The first row is labeled IA (first row of part I), and the subsequent rows IB, IC, ID, and IE. Each of these corresponds to a row in Table 1. The entries in the table show the number of estimated hours of effort associated with each task for each category of personnel. Note that in this table, the hours shown for chapter authors (Senior Author and Junior Author) correspond to the effort required for each chapter. Therefore, if it is assumed that six chapters are being written in a given phase of HFG development, the author estimates must be multiplied by six to get an estimate of the total level of author effort across all the chapters being developed. Note that the total author hours include literature review and write-up, development of guidelines, writing of the HFG chapter, periodic reviews of one’s own and the full set of chapters, collaboration and coordination for internal and external reviews, and review/exercising of the final CD-ROM-based HFG. A-6

Table 1. Personnel Category Level of Effort by Task. (note: “author” columns show per chapter estimates) Table 2 uses the level of effort estimates to generate order of magnitude costs for developing the HFG. Again, the costs will be reduced as the number of chapters done at one time is increased, since the editorial and technical review process will be more efficient. The table uses an approximate “loaded” hourly labor rate for each category of personnel. This should be taken only as a crude figure to help generate the rough order of magnitude estimate. The top portion of Table 2 shows the “rolled up” hours from Table 1, and the lower portion applies the hourly rates to derive costs. Total cost roll-ups are shown for both Tasks and Personnel. As noted, the assumption in Table 2 is that about six technical chapters are being developed. The cost of developing all 21 chapters is therefore roughly about three times this value. A-7

Table 2. Hours and Costs for Initial HFG Development (6 chapters) Some points in Table 2 bear mention. First, a critical assumption is the extent to which this CD ROM-based document makes use of multimedia capabilities. By these we mean illustrations, animations, video clips, and interactive capabilities. These features require meaningful effort from multi-media and graphics specialists, illustrators, and programmers. The assumption in the cost breakout is that among the six chapters, four have “low” multimedia requirements and two have “high” multimedia requirements. A second point is to note that the per chapter author costs are about $110K. As noted above, these costs cover both a senior and supporting junior author for tasks including literature review and write-up, development of guidelines, writing of the HFG chapter, periodic reviews of one’s own and the full set of chapters, collaboration and coordination for internal and external reviews, and review/exercising of the final CD-ROM-based HFG. As a reasonableness check on this “bottom up” derivation of cost, we approached from another perspective. TRB periodically funds development of synthesis papers on various topics. We see this as roughly analogous to the literature review and interpretation phase of the HFG author’s task. These TRB syntheses are generally funded at about $40K. Following this synthesis, we see the subsequent actual A-8

development of guidelines and the writing of a complete chapter, including re-writes after the various points of interaction with all of the interested outside parties, as a slightly larger task than the initial literature review. Therefore we used a rough estimate of $50K for this phase. Finally, the integrative and interactive nature of the HFG places a burden of working interactively with the central editors and with other authors, including reviews of others work, development of graphics, evaluation, etc. We estimated these technical and administrative tasks to require roughly $20K of effort over the period of the entire project, from conception through Beta testing and final release. Summing these three gross estimates ($40K, $50K, $20K), the total is $110K. Thus this figure seems to be at least roughly of the right magnitude, given all that the authors are presumed to do. We recognize that this is higher than the typical cost of authoring something like a book chapter. However, the conception of a CD ROM based interactive document as a support tool, rather than a simple text document, results in many more requirements. Also, as laid out in the plan, each author is developing two documents: the guidelines chapter for the HFG, and the detailed supporting literature synthesis. A final point to note about the cost breakout is that the estimated costs of chapter authors represents a little over half of the total costs. The requirements for technical content expertise and editorial efforts of the coordinating entity are substantial and the assumed degree of effort in animation, illustration, and other multi-media requirements is even greater. Again, this stems from the integrative and multi-media character of the HFG. At the same time, the project team acknowledges that these are very crude order of magnitude estimates and that other assumptions could lead to different estimates. In generating the initial estimate, we included in the discussions experts in the various disciplines associated with the presumed process. The period required to perform this work (initial set of chapters) is estimated at about 18 months. This includes time for outside review, although the turn-around on review can sometimes be more extended. The estimate of 18 months is based on the assumption of: Task I 2.0 months Task II 4.0 months Task III 6.0 months Task IV 3.5 months Task V 2.5 months A-9