Kim Swanson: 0:03

Welcome to AASHTO Resource Q&A. We're taking time to discuss construction materials, testing and inspection with people in the know. From exploring testing problems and solutions to laboratory best practices and quality management, we're covering topics important to you.

Brian Johnson: 0:18

Welcome to AASHTO Resource Q&A. I'm Brian Johnson.

Kim Swanson: 0:22

And I'm Kim Swanson, and we have two guests with us today, brian. Who are they?

Brian Johnson: 0:27

That's right. Today we've got Matt Lineman, chief Engineer for North Dakota DOT and COMP Chair, that is, the Committee on Materials and Pavements Chair. Welcome Matt.

Matt Linneman: 0:40

Yeah, thanks Brian, Thanks Kim, Thanks for having me here today.

Brian Johnson: 0:44

And we've got Casey Soneira, liaison to COMP and many other committees within AASHTO and wearers of many hats and masks and other things. Welcome Casey.

Casey Soneira : 0:59

Thanks, thanks for having me back.

Kim Swanson: 1:01

I don't want to get too far into the discussion because we've been throwing around the term comp and you briefly said what it was and I know we have another podcast episode about it from probably season one or season two. But very, very briefly, casey, can you give us like a one or two sentence synopsis of what comp is and what they do?

Casey Soneira : 1:22

The Committee on Materials and Pavements is one of many committees here at AASHTO. This group specifically is made up of the state materials engineers they're all kind of called different things across their state but also the subject matter experts for their fields within their testing units. This group is charged with development and maintenance of the Highway Materials Standards Book. It's a compendium of roughly 575 individual materials, test methods, specifications and practices. So this is the group that writes them, maintains them, updates them and sometimes says you know what, I don't think this is necessary anymore and sunsets them. So this is that group. We also do peer exchange and talk about you know, best practices and needs for practices within our realm.

Kim Swanson: 2:21

Well, thank you for that, Casey. I'm glad we had a whole episode about that a couple years ago when you could do it so succinctly with that. But anyway, back to you, Brian. I just wanted to get that out of the way before we went too far into this.

Brian Johnson: 2:34

Well, I'm glad you stopped us, because I was also thinking about this. We are going to go deep into committee activities, so some of you may be a little lost. But we'll try to keep it in layman's terms as much as possible and try to avoid some of the acronyms that we use all the time. But it's going to be very difficult because you've got a couple of us here who are used to talking shop at these meetings and, Kim, we are relying on you to interject and say I have no idea what you're talking about, so we can correct that.

Brian Johnson: 3:03

So Matt is here today because I was talking to him at the last Committee on Materials and Pavements meeting, where he is the chair, and he was talking about strategic planning and he had some ideas about what he wanted to do with comp and his leadership role and I thought what a great opportunity to talk to Matt and find out what kind of things he's thinking about. You don't have to have your strategic plan to unveil right now, Matt, but just kind of what kind of things that you want to do as the comp chair. So we are going to talk about that and some other things today. But before we get into it, my first question for you today, Matt, is with all of the things going on right now, all of the things that you have to do in your normal job that is newish to you why did you take on the role of the comp chair amidst all of the other things that you're doing?

Matt Linneman: 4:00

I got a couple of different answers for that, probably, but the serious answer is that you know, as formerly a state materials and research engineer for North Dakota, I had been a member of comp in the past and it was a very rewarding experience for me being involved with AASHTO friendships and relationships and as I had moved on and got the opportunity to become the chief engineer and was getting involved in AASHTO again because I knew that was going to be important to me but I didn't really know what that path looked like and getting involved with the council on highways and streets, about that time our great leader from before, mo Jamshidi, was looking at retirement and started getting in got.

Matt Linneman: 4:45

I got in the middle of a couple conversations of being in the wrong place at the wrong time, I guess, if you want to call it that and uh, this opportunity popped up and I thought it was a great chance to get back to uh, like I always say, a great group of friends that I've made and even, like I said, even moving on since, uh, my time and and with the committee, I'd stayed in contact with several of them. So I feel like it was coming home a little bit. It was a chance to take on a new role and still be involved in something that I really enjoy, which is materials and research both sides of that world. So I get to do a little bit more of that kind of on the side, on top of all the other duties that I get to enjoy to do now that kind of on the side on top of all the other duties that I get to enjoy to do now.

Brian Johnson: 5:32

Matt's position now as chief engineer. He oversees quite a bit of the activities at North Dakota. Dot Materials would be one of the many areas, or realms as Casey referred to them, that he has to be concerned with Matt.

Matt Linneman: 5:47

what other things are you involved with at North Dakota DOT? The way, like I said, every state's set up a little bit different and a lot of states have different names for chief engineers or that role. But here in North Dakota I get to work. Well, I always say the best part about my job now is I get to work with everybody. So I get to work with our right. So I get to work with our engineers that do our engineers, surveyors, field technicians, lab technicians that help do project development, so like the design of projects.

Matt Linneman: 6:14

So we have a group that does that. I get to work with our construction teams, both our central construction office and our out in our districts and in the field administering construction you know, highway infrastructure construction projects doing the oversight, doing the testing, doing the inspection, surveying, contract administration. And then I also get to work with our maintenance teams then that do the snow and ice control, pavement maintenance, roadside maintenance, all that sort of thing. And then I also get a couple unique groups with our civil rights division and our employee safety division and we have a separate deputy for planning. They kind of handle all the funding and planning and deciding where projects start. So they get projects started and then we basically deliver them and maintain them and operate them.

Brian Johnson: 7:03

I think a lot of times people who don't work with DOTs don't realize the scope of work that goes on at a DOT and how that can vary from state to state. So I know for some of the states, like Virginia, where I live, they are in charge of maintenance of all the local roads, which seems insane because there are so many of them. I don't know about North Dakota, though. I mean, how far do you go? Are you mainly concerned with the interstates and state roads, or do you cover everything?

Matt Linneman: 7:32

Yeah, in North Dakota the state highway system is what we have responsibility for, which includes the interstate, the state highways and the US numbered highways, and then, which is similar to many western states, we have a county network, so counties and cities and townships actually that maintain the local roadway network. But we also try to partner closely with them. You know there is federal aid that funnels to them. We have some new state funds available now that we help administer. We help them with some of their technical expertise as well, and also through our local technical assistance program that we have a partnership with our university here to deliver support to those local agencies. But we are solely responsible for the state highway system.

Brian Johnson: 8:18

Yeah. So why am I asking a question that's in the weeds? I know that's what you're thinking, Kim. I'm trying to get people to understand how much effort and time goes into these volunteer activities. So, basically, the activity that we're talking about today, with Matt as the comp chair, that is a high-level leadership position in a voluntary capacity that Matt has taken on in addition to his normal duties that are extensive with the DOT. So we really appreciate the effort you put into that, Matt, and we're excited about having you in the leadership position. So I want to talk about that leadership position now, though, now that we've kind of set the stage. So let's talk about the beginning of your tenure here as the comp chair. So you came in and you had an idea of some things that you wanted to see happen. We could call it a strategic plan or we could call it just some things that you wanted to accomplish in the beginning. But do you want to tell us about some of those things that you were thinking about?

Matt Linneman: 9:24

For me coming into this role and actually coming into my role as the chief engineer at the DOT and kind of relating this. I think that's the one thing that ASTHO provides. That's one of the reasons I'm interested in doing this too is that this is just another forum to help work on leadership skills, right and perspectives, and it's a fulfilling role. And I think some of there's a lot of good parallels there. So my thought was where. You know the first question I asked I know what the Committee on Materials and Pavements has done and has always done right, like we talked, like Casey gave the overview of, you know, publishing the standards, publishing the material standards and some guides, but what else are we right and what else are we doing and what else should we be doing? And those were sort of questions I was asking. And so then, as we started discussing, we said, well, maybe we should look at what is our strategic roadmap, is the term we're using right? We're falling in line with the AASHTO strategic plan overall across all the committees and councils, and we want to make sure we're aligned with that. What is AASHTO asking us to do? What are the states? What are all 52 state DOTs asking out of AASHTO. Aashto has worked out a great strategic plan for all of its groups. So then how are each committee fitting into that and then also serving the needs of the users? So I think you start with that and then start laying out, you know, your fundamental building blocks of a roadmap, a strategy plan.

Matt Linneman: 10:52

Right is, what is our core mission? You boil that down into one sentence. Like you said, ryan, we haven't got there yet. You know we've been having these discussions with and we want a lot of input, you know, both from the comp membership and specifically from the, the steering committee and we can talk a little bit about the actual steering committee here in a minute. But like setting those so we can say in one sentence this is our mission, here's our vision of where we want to go.

Matt Linneman: 11:19

How do we value what we do here? How do we value all the members? What are our cultural aspirations as a group? How do we make everybody feel like they belong and can get involved right away? What are the initiatives that we have to tackle? And, just like you said me, balancing my workload. How do we balance everybody's volunteerism and workload to accomplish some of these things when we know we have a core base of things we need to do in delivering the standards and keeping them up to date, but also maybe you know that we need to be looking at ourselves as the leaders when it comes to transportation materials transportation and pavements. And how do we tackle some of those emerging issues and make sure that we can provide the input and the guidance that states are looking for?

Brian Johnson: 12:02

Yeah now, casey, given that it sounds like a lot of effort and coordination is going to be needed to get that accomplished. So what have you been thinking about as the compliaison to kind of assist Matt along the way in getting some of these things done?

Casey Soneira : 12:21

I think one of the things that Matt really brought up that's really important is just including the stakeholders. You know, I know you, brian, me, kim we all work for AASHTO but we're not actually AASHTO, like we're employees, but the members are AASHTO. And so understanding what our members really want and getting them into a focus group, understanding, you know what they want and what we can do within the limitations of, you know, staff capacity, you know the rules and regulations that we have because we do actually have some of those and kind of the time limits, and understanding that there is a certain capacity for change that we need to take hold of. We do still have standards. You know maintaining, updating and maintaining the standards is still kind of our core. But I agree with Matt, it can't be the only thing that we do. Sorry, I kind of veered a little bit, but making sure that we have stakeholder buy-in and input from the steering committee especially the steering committee is just to describe what they are.

Casey Soneira : 13:27

They're made up of four regional representatives from our all 52 states. So we have a Northeast, a Southeast, a Western representative and then a Middle America representative, which is kind of the Midwest. It's made up of our chair and vice chair. We have an ex officio member with Federal Highway and then our ATG, our administrative task group chair, which is the AASHTA resource oversight group. Chair is another ex officio member, of course. Chair is another ex officio member, of course, myself as just kind of the facilitator of that group and the pavements chair.

Casey Soneira : 14:06

And the pavements chair. Thank you, I forgot about the pavements chair. Actually, that brings up a good point that I need to circle back to when I'm done with this. But the steering committee is really a good cross-section of representation across our regions and across the materials. They're all either chairs or vice chairs of technical subcommittees, so they have held leadership positions. They're all voting members from their state, so they're the state voting member that was appointed by their CEO. They've got great exposure. They have great understanding of the materials, what this group does, but also just lab work in general and the framework of what's going on in their states and their regions. So they're a great place to start and we've really got a great network of members who are very willing to tell us what they think. I mean, that's a great place to start is just understanding what they want. What does success look like? What does success in 5, 10, 15 years look like? And then, what steps can we make now and systems can we put in place to eventually get there?

Brian Johnson: 15:06

Yeah, I think that's going to be a challenge as far as the amount of ballots that go out normally Just for normal activities that people are used to, and the sequence of events that people are used to and all of a sudden interjecting hey, let's sit down and actually like take a step back and look at what we're doing and what we want to accomplish. Uh, so, so matt, I guess. When do you think we we might get to a point, uh, where we can actually sit down with the steering committee and talk about some of these things?

Matt Linneman: 15:37

that's the conversation we're starting. Obviously, the the flow of things. As I'm starting, I'm learning too right, as we we meet monthly as a steering committee. We we spend a full day twice a year, uh, in person to talk about these things, and so we had. We had kind of been teasing this idea and throwing those around, but at the at the annual meeting at the steering committee, there we spent a lot of time talking about this and talking about some of these same sort of ideas when do we want to go, what are the things we need to focus on, what's the time allocation look like for that and how we get the business done that we have to do.

Matt Linneman: 16:12

And so from that I've been trying to synthesize that a little bit. That's because what I owe back to the steering committee is give them something to chew on in writing based on that and a lot of the stuff you know as far as putting words on paper for our strategic roadmap, a lot of the stuff exists in documentation that's already out there between the AASHTO website or guidance documents or the operating procedures. So I've been reading through that stuff quite a bit, trying to glean the words out there but also maybe take a twist on what I heard out of the conversations. And then once obviously it's always easier to react to something that's in writing, right Once, say we're going to put this on paper and say this is what we're about. But I think we're going to want, like Casey said, we want a lot of input into that and I just know going through this process before it takes some time, right, because we want that input and it always comes out better when we take the time to get the input and polish it.

Matt Linneman: 17:06

But I think we don't want to. We don't want a mile long roadmap. We want something that's fairly straightforward, it's fairly succinct, it's fairly. You know, casey encapsulated part of that already today when she gave the brief overview. It's like we should be able to say this is the committee on materials story, materials and payment story, right, that this is what we do. Here's our focus areas for right now. These are the things that we're spending time on and that will change. The focus areas will probably change as those technologies or policies or situations evolve. Um, we'll have to evolve with it and maybe we've adapted and we we build it into something that we just do as a normal sort of I always call it like our base load of work, which is the, the update of the standards, some of that stuff. We'll just roll into that and then we can look at the next thing.

Brian Johnson: 17:56

Try not to overwhelm everyone with doing too much yeah, and that, that plenty, just so people have an idea. There are, casey, you said there are how many standards that are being managed. I'm sorry if that went away from your screen or if it's up here, it changes from year to year.

Casey Soneira : 18:15

So we're typically between 550 and 600 standards Changes from year to year, so we're typically between 550 and 600 standards, which results in a roughly 6,000 page annual publication every year annually. So those are the material standards. But one thing that I did neglect to mention was that, because we are the materials and pavements group, we also have a bunch of several other pavement-related documentation or pavement-related documents. So we have the Guide for Pavement Structures, guide for Pavement Friction, local Calibration, pavement Guide, manual on Subsurface Investigation, the MEPDG, which is the Mechanistic Empirical Pavement Design Guide, which is what basically AASHTOWARE is based off of. I'm glad, kim, you didn't ask me what MEPDG meant without me being able to read it, because I just refer to it as that and I forget what it's actually called.

Casey Soneira : 19:08

We have the Pavement Management Guide, the Pavement Smoothness Guide and then the Supplemental Guide on Pavement Design Structures. So all of those in addition to an annual 6,000 page document. Plus, we all want to do professional development, talk about workforce, talk about, you know, quality lab practices. So how do we make sure we get all of that and do the things that? You know? People around the world are using these standards and guides, the things that you know. People around the world are using these standards and guides, so we really do have quite a bit of responsibility to make sure that those are maintained.

Casey Soneira : 19:53

It's stressful just hearing all of the items that are of concern to this committee, managed by volunteers.

Brian Johnson: 19:57

It stressed me out, saying them yeah. I was like is she done yet, explaining what these are? No, there's so many of them. So here's a question for you, matt, thinking about how to handle all this and what, as the leader of this group, you can do to make sure that we've got the volunteers that are willing to work on this stuff. Have you had any thoughts about ways to stimulate people, to get them to sign up for more, to raise their hand in these meetings? You know all these already busy people who show up for these. Is there something you've been thinking about and it doesn't have to be on paper yet, of course, but just anything that might come to mind about how to get more volunteers?

Matt Linneman: 20:44

the one thing we try to talk a lot about at the annual meeting is just involvement and building our sense of community, right, we we have? We have a great core group of people that have been in their roles a long time and have been long time contributors to the community into the standards right, and we have lots of new people that are coming in every year and, just as we're getting, it gets fairly complicated when you're the first time coming into one of these meetings and understanding how this all works and the flows of of uh, you know, revising standards and running balance, running ballots and confusing old terminology with new terminology. But the point is we want people involved right away. We want them to feel welcome, to say we want you to join our materials and payments community and say we need your help, whether that's as a research liaison, as a steward of a standard right that can really dig in and be a subject matter expert and contribute to the update of those standards, being liaisons to other committees, right, and helping with that. So I think that's the first part is, you know, when I first started, you know, and first came my first meeting, it was like I have no idea what that was about right, like I took away some technical things, but the whole process I was like I'll get it later, right, and then I probably would have been in that boat for a while, but I got a chance to be step in and be a vice chair pretty early and then it all made more sense.

Matt Linneman: 22:16

So, getting involved I always encourage people to get involved because then it all makes more sense and we don't have the opportunity anymore. Right, we have a retiring aging workforce, we get a lot of turnover, right. Everyone's seeing that their places of work are their state DOTs I know that they are. The same is happening then, obviously, in AASHTO committees. The same is happening then, obviously, in AASHTO committees. So we really need people to get involved right away and we know that they can contribute. Right, and so that's what we're trying to encourage, and we're trying to encourage that sense of community that we're all here. We're all a great big family.

Brian Johnson: 22:54

We want to be here to help each other and share with each other and find ways that we can help each other out.

Brian Johnson: 23:03

Yeah, I think you did a great job at the comp meeting going over that part, trying to that you care about the community, you know that's why you got involved, like you mentioned earlier, and that is something you want people to understand as they get involved and we've seen some of the you know some of the fruits of that type of discussion already with some of the newer members that we saw the previous year who are now in leadership positions.

Brian Johnson: 23:19

I'm thinking about Sue from Florida, for example. You know she came in, she was trying to figure it out and, boom, now she's a chair, getting involved in all sorts of ballots, engaged in discussions in the meeting. You know, as far as I'm concerned, great success story with her involvement and how do we get more of it? So I think that the way you have been talking to people, both at the plenary and the introduction of the meeting and sort of the wrap up at the end, was a good way to do it and hopefully this conversation will be heard by some and it will spur on some motivated people to sign up for things.

Matt Linneman: 23:56

I think the other thing too and Casey has brought this up, I think, in previous meetings is that we do have some opportunities and capacity to help help right. We have two contractors that help us with the work that we do already Mark Feeleg obviously, obviously also serving as our secretary for the steering committee and the overall committee, and Georgine Gary helping with that very technical writing. So we have that opportunity that's very critical for us delivering this. Casey's also brought up the point. You know that there's there's NCHRP help out there if there's there's several different pots of of funds. You know there's the full NCHRP research program, but there's also other. There's an also a pot of money just for help and support for AASHTO committees that we can tap into if we need technical help on things that are maybe a little bit bigger issues to deal with. So I think there's some resources out there and obviously partnering and collaborating with others in the industry that will also obviously make things easier for us too.

Brian Johnson: 24:59

Yeah, I did want to talk for a minute about those other interested parties. So when you're developing the strategic roadmap you kind of alluded to getting other interested parties involved, getting input from people what other kind of people or industry folks should we get involved in the development of some of these standards and some of the work that COMP is doing?

Matt Linneman: 25:23

I think we've always known that industry input is valuable, even though this is a committee of the states, for the states, by the states, if you want to call it that way. But we need industry input too. Right, because we need to know what they're capable of. We invite them to be at the meeting they're critical for being sponsors, for making the in-person meeting happen. But we need their technical input right. We need their feedback on what their industry can and can't do, what's realistic, what isn't. We want them involved in technical, sub-technical working groups, task forces, things like that, that are working on specifics, because without that we might not know the whole story of where the industry's at. So we definitely need that input as well.

Brian Johnson: 26:10

Casey. Is there anything we're missing? Have you thought about any other parties that should be involved, or are there ways that we could get people more involved that you've been thinking about?

Casey Soneira : 26:20

I think about involvement in all of the committees all the time, whether it's volunteer involvement or, well, I guess, state volunteer involvement, or industry, academic, student involvement, other associations, other non-government associations, but even local agencies like local governments. That would be great to get them involved as well. Understand, you know what they're doing, whether or not they have certain things that they're working on, relationships that they have within their state, or you know local communities. Ultimately, you know, we can all learn from each other. It's not just 52 states who are using these standards. It's, as you know, Brian being the accreditation director, many, many more, like thousands of accredited laboratories, many more thousands of non-accredited labs and then individuals within those laboratories using these methods. So we have a responsibility to really make sure that they're the most useful that they can be, and bringing people to the table to contribute to that is really an important part of that. And we listen. You know we can't take every single person's comment and say, yes, absolutely, we're going to do that and that and that, then that. But there is a conversation and if we don't hear the conversation, especially from someone you know who has a unique perspective, maybe someone it's a kind of a niche material or, you know, an emerging technology. We really need to be including those people in the conversation in order to make these standards the most useful and to make sure that people, even if they are useful, that people know about them and that they're using them.

Casey Soneira : 28:09

And, ultimately, the volunteer model I've spent a lot of time thinking about this too. I think it's a numbers game, you know, when it comes to succession planning, you can have, you know, the best people, but if not every single one of those people will have the personality, the desire, the motivation or the ability to step into a leadership role. So what we need to maintain, kind of the volunteer model which, you know, a lot of associations, a lot of volunteer groups are struggling with this, is to make sure that there are people showing up and being there and having being part of the conversation. Now, industry members, academics they can't really hold leadership groups within or leadership positions within this group, so that's kind of an unfortunate circumstance that we find ourselves in. But if we have people from industry and academia and other you know groups, they can really help with some of the task forces and some of the really kind of technical, really nitty gritty, technical pieces. That clears the way for our volunteer leaders within the states to have that extra capacity to lead and facilitate these discussions, keep track of things and take part in that. You know, leadership discussion and when it comes to you know I agree with everything Matt said in terms of trying to get these volunteers engaged and participating.

Casey Soneira : 29:39

A big part of my job is making sure that we have the structure I think of probably all of our committees this committee comp and maybe like design and maybe bridges and structures, because there are two other big publications, heavy committees. We are very, very process oriented. Which tracks? Because it's a bunch of engineers. We're very process oriented.

Casey Soneira : 30:03

And so making people, trying to take away some of the ambiguity, trying to make people understand there is a process, it is a thoughtful process, you'll be safe, participating, you know, creating that space of psychological safety for them to, you know, be nervous but be supported, helping them not only understand that we have a thoughtful process but communicating it and including them in any changes or improvements we make within those processes and then just helping people feel valued.

Casey Soneira : 30:36

You know there's a real difference between being needed and feeling valued and we all know we need volunteers, but when people step into those roles, I think I take it as a personal task of mine and a job responsibility to make sure that they're comfortable and have an enjoyable experience. I mean, they're doing extra work. It kind of ultimately maybe benefits the DOTs and benefits the stakeholders, but they're not getting paid to do this. Benefits the DOTs and benefits the stakeholders, but they're not getting paid to do this. So I want to make sure that it's a pleasant experience that it's. You know, the gratitude is individualized. I try to make jokes. We try to, you know, meet people where they are and support them in the ways that we can, even if that is a specific tailored joke.

Brian Johnson: 31:26

Yeah, yeah, I think there's really so much fun you can have with Robert's Rules of Order, but I feel like comp is pretty laid back as far as a structured committee environment is. You know the actual meeting. You know people are free to discuss things and it's not. You know Mr Chairman or you know are free to discuss things and it's not. You know you know mr, mr chairman or you know chairperson, whatever you know, am I able to speak now?

Casey Soneira : 31:55

it's not that structured I think ultimately what it will boil down to across all of our committees is the more people we can get to participate, and that doesn't necessarily even mean coming to the in-person meeting. So I know, like I know, travel can be a huge barrier for some people, whether it's through their state or just personal preferences or personal circumstances. Just have a micro engagement. So you know, you don't have to be the voting member, you don't even have to really be on the committee to have your supervisor say hey, I'm in charge of reviewing the standard this year. And you take the supervisor, takes the standard and plops it in front of the technician and says can you like mark this up and see you know what needs to be updated. Is there anything out of date? Are there any typos? You know, what do you think about this? And in that way they're getting a sense of, oh, this is what comp is, this is what the standard is.

Casey Soneira : 32:56

I didn't know I could do this. I just thought I was stuck with this standard forever, you know, but that's like one step towards a micro engagement that can continue to build and build and build and then when that person hopefully they stay with the DOT and get promoted and you know, become engaged with a committee even more. It's not this massive, you know room of people who know all the rules and all of these things that are happening in these terms that nobody knows. You're slightly more familiar. Maybe you've had some exposure to some of the technical subcommittee virtual meetings because you've been invited to come and talk about the changes that you're proposing. It's those opportunities for micro-engagement that I see as being kind of a lifeline to succession, with getting DOT staff continuing to be engaged in this group as we get younger and younger and fewer and fewer workforce people available. Just making sure that it's not, you know, understanding is not a barrier to entry, I think is a really important thing for us to kind of try and be very intentional about.

Kim Swanson: 34:05

I had a question for Matt that what are some of the personal benefits of being a volunteer that maybe you've noticed in other people or that you've experienced yourself as volunteering with comp? What are some of like not only the professional benefits of it, but the personal benefits that you've gotten from being a volunteer?

Matt Linneman: 34:26

That's a good question. I think some of it for me has been, like I alluded to a little bit before, just the ability to, especially in this role now, to work on leadership skills. Right, it's one thing to lead your team that you supervise, let's say, at your normal job, but it's different when you're working with a group of volunteers, right? So you approach things differently. It gives you new perspectives. You get to hear a lot of different perspectives from around the country, from all the different states.

Matt Linneman: 34:54

That's one thing I always enjoy being able to just, you know, especially at an in-person meeting, you know pick someone's brain on some issue that you have going on or you've created that contact network. It actually was surprising to me going from the state materials engineer and being involved in the committee of materials to now to the committee on highways and streets and a different peer group. But having a lot of those AASHTO relationships, like with Casey and Brian, made that transition pretty easy for me because there's a lot of familiar faces around, right. So and so I really enjoyed that and, like I said, it's built a lot of friendships over the time too. That I've maintained and that's been a personal value to me as well.

Brian Johnson: 35:40

Yeah, it's a great community and I love that you keep talking about the community and the relationships that are built. Keep talking about the community and the relationships that are built. It's been, you know, even from a staff perspective. I think that's been a real benefit for us. Casey, I think you would agree with that as well, because I know that we've talked about this before with certain people that we know and really like to spend time with at these meetings, like somebody like Matt, for example. It's nice to be able to go to another meeting and then you see that person again, like TRB or some of the other meetings, regional meetings, so I think that's really great. I wanted to ask you, matt, back to the roadmap concept are there any changes that you have thought about that you would like to see? This is a tough question because we haven't gotten too into it yet, but has there been anything on your mind.

Matt Linneman: 36:36

I might have a lot of ideas, but I really want to hear everybody else's ideas, right, and I want the input on it. So I think that's what's key. We already kind of talked about that, especially the steering committee. That's what their role is. Casey went over the membership of it, but that's really what we're asking them to do is help shape all of this as it goes. Right, I'm viewing that that's my role, and Casey kind of keeps me in the guardrails of where can we go and what can we do, and hear everybody else's ideas and say, okay, we all need ownership in this, right.

Matt Linneman: 37:13

You know, one specific thing that will definitely build into the roadmap but is already taking shape and was an idea long before I came along, was how to deal with research. Right, we've always been. How does research inform the activities and the standards development and the manuals development? How do we seek it out? How do we get input into it? How do we turn that those ideas, into actual, usable research? Right, and so that's something that each technical subcommittee used to deal with we used to talk about at the annual meeting. You know, in the brief time that I was gone from the committee, there was new ideas and a research summit was put in place separately to have those discussions. Now we're standing up and rolling out a new dedicated technical subcommittee just for research to kind of handle all of that right. So we know that research needs to be something that we grab onto more, get more value out of, and now we're putting a focus on that right. So that was a discussion at the last steering committee meeting. We got everybody on board with that idea and so we have a map. Now we just got to get them up and running and so they understand what the roles and responsibilities are.

Matt Linneman: 38:25

In case. He's working on documenting some of that and we'll have to learn that a little bit, right. Well, we'll learn what works and what doesn't, but there's some good foundation that's already been laid for that and we're taking action towards it. Right, and I'll probably reflect that as we as we write our roadmap. But there's some of those things we're already working towards that are outside of that core of standards development, and I think there'll be more things like that. We know there's lots of emerging issues out there, right, like workforce development. Casey mentioned that. We talk about that at every conference we go to. Probably Low carbon materials is a big one for us Buy America, policy changes and things like that. Like there's all sorts of those sort, those emerging things that I think we need to be weighing in on as a committee, because we're the leaders in those areas. But we need to strike a balance.

Brian Johnson: 39:17

Yeah, there are a lot of things you're thinking about right now. So the typical comp meeting is about a week and it is a full week. But now you've got all these standards to manage, guides, manuals, and now you've got to also discuss hey, what are best practices around low-carbon materials and all the other things you just mentioned, the other things you just mentioned. Do you foresee a time where we shift from the formulaic nature of the meetings, where we go through the agenda and the votes and the affirmatives and negatives, to having more time towards the best practice sharing, or what AASHTO calls peer exchanges in a lot of cases? Do you think that might be coming at some point?

Matt Linneman: 40:15

I think we've had some discussions on what is that distribution of time split right, because you can't go away from the core of what makes the Committee of Materials makes it right, like that formula has worked for many, many years for many, many versions of the standards right, so we can't take away. That's the identity, that's the core. We got to be careful that we don't lose our identity, but we also have to make time, and so that's something that we ask the steering committee to contemplate right? That's one of the things we left with, I would say, from our in-person meeting is what is that balance of how much time we spend on what we do, and where are there places that we can provide some capacity? You know we're not going to turn it into a two week meeting you know as much as people might enjoy that.

Matt Linneman: 41:06

You know it's already, like you said, a pack full agenda for a week or so. So we got to, you know, pick our spots and find where we get value. And you know we've already done some of that. Casey and the steering committee has already been shaping that the last few years when it comes to the some of the roundtable discussions, getting good value out of those, getting good value out of the research discussions and maybe shifting that around a little bit. Now we got a different group that can focus on that. So maybe there's a little bit more of that structuring we can do using some of the outside support opportunities that there are to gain some capacity. But I think that's where we really need to figure out what do we want to do? And then we'll have to figure out how are we going to build the capacity to do that.

Casey Soneira : 41:51

So one of the things that sort of you know my job is making sure that we don't waste the members' time, that we make the best use of their time as much as we can. Try to streamline things, try to remove barriers. To Matt's point, one of the things that he mentioned was the research summit, and the research summit came about because we used to talk about research the last four hours of an in-person meeting and people had to leave for flights. A lot of people were tired. Not everyone had had a chance to review the research that had come in. So we would talk about it and say you know, what do you think about this? And for some people it's the first time they're hearing it. They don't know what's going on with that particular thing in their state off the top of their head. Because why would they? And we were just like everyone's so exhausted Are we getting what we need out of this? And the answer was very obviously no.

Casey Soneira : 42:49

You could see people just twitching and looking at their watches, like I got to catch my flight.

Casey Soneira : 42:54

We weren't getting a lot of discussion and so we just picked it up and said can we just do this virtually a couple of weeks later, send these all out, send all these statements out, give people an opportunity to review them and talk, you know, confer with their states and with their sub committees.

Casey Soneira : 43:10

So not only did we then make the research discussion more valuable, that opened up time within the meeting to talk about other things, to give us a little bit of padding for, you know, those peer exchange-y type discussions it made us, gave us some flexibility in not having so many concurrent sessions, so some sessions that you just have one session instead of two or three. But those small kind of incremental changes where we look at and we say is this practice, is this system really doing what it's intended or is it having unintended consequences? Because the research at the end of the research meeting, at the end of trying new things and still doing getting the deliverable, but maybe in a different way. Yeah, I'm really grateful that this committee has been so flexible and willing to try new things.

Brian Johnson: 44:14

All right, Matt, I have one last question for you. What does success look like for you at the end of your term as comp chair? Is there anything you'll feel like you really want to accomplish this before you step down as comp chair?

Matt Linneman: 44:31

Let me stop you there A really long time from now.

Casey Soneira : 44:36

I was going to say what's the length of term.

Matt Linneman: 44:37

Don't worry about it term, don't worry about it, don't worry about it I really think that putting this roadmap together will will lay that out for us like so. So first thing on my list is let's get this formulated and say, okay, now we know what we're gonna do, right then we. Then we can say, okay, now these are the focus areas that we're gonna put our effort into. So it helps us prioritize too, because we know we've talked a couple times we need to have that balance. So what does that look like for all of us? And that we want to get accomplished. So I don't know if I have the greatest answer yet, because I want some more input to say what are those priorities from all the members and from the steering committee and say then we can go to work in making it happen. And I think that will show that will be what I want to do is that we've carried out those objectives that we come out of this strategic roadmap and, I think, continuing to build the community that we have. That everybody feels, which I think they do now, but we can always do better, especially for new members. Right To say you're welcome here. This is a safe, inclusive place that we want you to be involved in, be involved in the conversations, even if it's your first day in the door, even if it's your first meeting that you've ever been to.

Matt Linneman: 45:52

And I think the other thing that we're another thing that we're already doing is working on the communications out to the group. Right, we, we we have a lot more communications going out that come from Casey. She's been doing a great job of probably ramping that up. We're now doing quarterly leadership meetings as well to inform all of the, the, the technical subcommittee, leadership chairs and vice chairs of what some of the things that are going on like this. Obviously, this is a great forum for putting that information out too, but we can also have those one-on-ones and give them a chance to ask questions outside of the kind of once a year format. So, building the community, building our roadmap and really making sure we still continue to deliver the quality and the expectation that the states have that come out of this committee for really setting the framework of what transportation materials and payments quality should be. That's the high standard that we've got to continue to carry out too. So those are the three, I guess off the top, and we'll have more specific ones as we go.

Brian Johnson: 47:01

Well, I want to thank you, matt, matt Linneman from North Dakota DOT and Casey Sinera, aashto colleague, and, as always, kim Swanson, who's going to have some fun editing this one with the nonsense in the beginning, so hopefully not everybody hears that anyway. But thanks again for your time and input and looking forward to your tenure as comp chair.

Matt Linneman: 47:26

Yeah, thanks for the opportunity. It was a great discussion so I do appreciate all this opportunity and I appreciate the opportunity to provide the leadership for the committee on materials, so I'm excited about the role.

Casey Soneira : 47:39

Brian, thanks Kim and thanks Matt.

Kim Swanson: 47:45

I'm excited to work with all of you. Thanks for listening to AASHTO Resource Q&A. If you'd like to be a guest or just submit a question, send us an email at podcast at aashtoresourceorg, or call Brian at 240-436-4820. For other news and related content, check out AASHTO Resources' social media accounts or go to aashtoresourceorg.