Since the 1998 national "Thinking Beyond the Pavement" Workshop, it has been widely understood that multi-disciplinary teams are important to the success of the Context Sensitive Design/Solutions process. The means by which organizations have been most successful in establishing and managing multi-disciplinary teams is not well-understood and is not yet applied with consistency. Current and emerging successful practices, case studies and guidance need to be synthesized and disseminated to further enable appropriate, cost-effective, and successful integration of multi-disciplinary professionals and other stakeholders into the planning and project development process to inform and influence context sensitive design/solutions in a more widespread and consistent manner. Items to be addressed include, but are not limited to the following: ﾷ What are DOT CSS definitions and are multidisciplinary teams included in the CSS definition? ﾷ Is there ongoing CSS training? Who is being trained and at what level? ﾷ How does the CSS philosophy fit into DOT organizational structure? ﾷ What is the multi-disciplinary team composition (e.g. internal and external)? How are teams developed? ﾷ When, how, and how often do multi-disciplinary teams interact for projects in different contexts (e.g., small or large projects, rural or urban, etc.)? ﾷ How do outside agencies/consultants/communities fit into teams? ﾷ When and how is community outreach undertaken? ﾷ Fully describe successes achieved A review of the relevant literature in the field will be combined with survey results in order to report on the current state of the practice. Based on survey results, case studies and or profiles of successful practice will be included to describe innovations in the field, as well as lessons learned and gaps in information.

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More Information: onlinepubs.trb.org/onlinepubs/nchrp/nchrp_syn_373.pdf