perienced investigative staff was employed by the Blatnik Committee. In the ensuing months and years, the Committee became very active in terms of both investigations and public hearings.
Interstate 10 through the rugged Texas hill country west of Kerrville blends with the terrain because care has been taken to preserve the natural vegetation and to make the highway and interchange design compatible with their surroundings.
To augment the limited resources of the project examination office and the efforts of the Blatnik Committee staff, an active effort of encouragement, persuasion and professional guidance was initiated by the Bureau to get the States to initiate their own programs of internal review and investigation. The leadership in AASHO actively supported this effort with the result that many States instituted their own internal review processes.
In 1962, as an administrative action designed to strengthen the independence of BPR’s internal and external audit and investigative programs, a new office was established with its Director reporting directly to the Federal Highway Administrator. This change separated the audit and accounting functions which had been organizationally combined since the creation of an accounting section. The responsibility for the financial audit of State reimbursement vouchers remained at the field level while the headquarters office provided technical direction, leadership, and guidance in all financial audit activities. In 1971 the internal audit function was absorbed into a centralized departmental internal audit office.
Training
A key to the successful administration of the Federal-aid highway program has been the outstanding people in most of the top positions in the organization and a strong supporting staff with a remarkably low employee turnover rate—recently running at an annual rate of 11 percent, about half that of the Federal Government as a whole,[1] Part of the reason for this was that the program itself attracted bright young engineers but also because the Bureau offered specialized training.
A strong interest in training dates back to 1893 when the Office of Road Inquiry was established. One of the primary purposes of that organization was education, but mainly in the external sense. This included encouraging the colleges and universities to teach highway engineering since, at that time, there were few academically trained highway engineers.
In the Annual Report for fiscal year 1903, Director Martin Dodge recommended the establishment in the Office of Public Road Inquiries of a post-graduate national school of roadbuilding similar to the L’Ecole Nationale des Ponts et Chaussees that was established in Paris in 1747. No action was taken on this recommendation, although the idea resurfaced many times in later years.
In 1905 the Office of Public Roads (OPR) initiated its first formal internal training program. Graduates of engineering colleges were appointed after a competitive civil service examination to the position of civil engineering student at a salary of $600 per year. A course of instruction included experience in the construction of object lesson or experimental roads, instruction in the office routine, laboratory work and theoretical instruction through lectures and reading assignments. After completing the year’s training, the students were promoted to the position of junior highway engineer in OPR at $900 per year. This program continued until 1916 with the number of appointees ranging from 4 to 10 per year.[2] During the period of this first engineer training program, a total of 78 students were appointed.[3]
In 1921 the engineer training program was reinstituted. The emphasis in this program was quality recruitment. Most students were recruited during their junior year of college and placed on a production cost study. They were evaluated for future employment and, if they met the desired standards, were appointed to a junior engineer position after graduation. They were then given a 2- to 3-year period of training throughout the country in production cost studies, equipment development and design, and economic studies. The program was gradually phased out by 1936 because of economic conditions. During the span of this second training program, approximately 150 college graduates were appointed.[4] A high percentage of these men ultimately moved into key positions in the Bureau, the most notable of whom was Francis C. Turner who became the Federal Highway Administrator in 1969.
At the end of World Was II, the Junior Engineer Training Program was reactivated and administered by a professional training officer. For the first time,
- ↑ Federal Highway Administration, Manpower Utilization Study—1974 (Dept. of Transportation, Washington, D.C., 1974) p. VI–4.
- ↑ W. Holt, supra, note 9, p. 12.
- ↑ Bureau of Public Roads, Report On the Junior Engineer Training Program—July 1, 1946 to October 1, 1955 (Dept. of Commerce, Washington, D.C., 1955) p. 1.
- ↑ Id.
