The Business Process Improvement
A New Direction for the Joint Labor-Management Committees

By Dave Huff

The newest addition to our successful Joint Labor-Management Committee system is the Business Process Improvement (BPI) structure of committees.

BPI is a project to integrate computer systems and minimize duplication throughout the Department of Water & Power. I refer to it as a structure, because it is a slight variation on our usual configuration of committees. The key difference here is the formation of an Oversight Committee.

The basic structure of the BPI has the Oversight Committee at the top of the organizational chart. The Oversight Committee consists of members of the Joint Resolution Board, top management of the BPI team, and the President of the DWP Board of Commissioners. All BPI issues come before the Oversight Committee for final approval.

A Planning/Steering Committee (P/S) reports to the Oversight Committee. This body is the real workhorse of the BPI committees. The P/S Committee receives BPI issues and assigns them to the appropriate subcommittee. It also receives the recommendations back from those subcommittees.

Currently, there are four BPI subcommittees. They are: Strategy/Goals; Contracts; Information Technology Support Issues, and Review and Update of Current Issues. These subcommittees address issues that are assigned to them by the P/S Committee, and they return their resolutions back to that committee. The P/S Committee reviews the recommendations from the subcommittees and decides on what action to take (return to subcommittee for further work, or refer to the Oversight Committee). Ultimately, all issues are sent to the Oversight Committee for final approval.

At first glance, this new structure appears to add another layer of bureaucracy to our standard process. In theory, however, it will increase accountability at each level of the process, hopefully resulting in a better end-product. Only time will tell if this new structure works. If it does work, we may consider incorporating it into some of our existing committees.

In this article, I am commenting only on the committee structure. In future reports, I plan to get into the details of what BPI is attempting to achieve.

Remember that the Joint Labor-Management Committees are there to address issues that pertain to you. Please be sure to communicate with the members of the committees in your areas and let your voice be heard!