Scott Marler has been Director of the Iowa Department of Transportation since 2020. He’s been in the transportation industry for over 24 years, but in 2015, he had an experience that he believes played a significant role in his career’s steady, upward trajectory that brought him to his current role as Director.
In 2015, he participated in the Operations Academy and those two weeks proved to be a “game changer” for more than one reason.
The Operations Academy opened an entire network of professions that he’d never known before. In the nine years since he completed the program, he’s been connected to transportation industry professionals in all different areas of the country.
“I met people at the Operations Academy and continue lifelong relationships with them to this day,” he said. “I call that a game changer.”
He also acquired a common, baseline understanding of what transportation systems operations and management (TSMO) means, calling it a vital concept that focuses on essential elements of transportation.
As a governor-appointed state DOT director, his operations background certainly contributed to putting him in the chair in which he now sits.
Among the greatest challenges is to recognize that although there will always be a need for construction by transportation departments, there is significant infrastructure already in place, and it’s his job to help IowaDOT find ways to operate it more efficiently and reliably.
“That is the message I received when I started in the Operations Academy, and it has continues to define my leadership in the transportation space to this day,” he said.
Upon beginning the sessions of the Operations Academy, Scott had an academic sense of TSMO, but as he moved through the program and listened to the sessions, he gained a much wider understanding. He moved from an academic understanding of TSMO, to a distilled, more practical one instead.
“That’s what Operations Academy catalyzed in my mind,” he said. “I learned practical techniques that I could take home to IowaDOT.”
Armed with new insights and information, Scott returned to his agency with ideas to create a TSMO plan, which became one of the first in the nation. These days, there are TSMO plans in every state, but in 2015, it was groundbreaking and IowaDOT became a national model.
Establishing a TSMO culture in his agency was another impact of graduating from the Operations Academy. He took the tactics he learned and applied them to the entire organization, including field maintenance, roadway project development, and airport funding, with the knowledge that working through an operations lens made the entire organization more effective.
“Where we really accelerated was when we put together a budget including operations and TSMO,” Scott said. “It enabled the ongoing development of tactics. That was another game changer—setting aside money for operations. Before, there was not a budget for TSMO, but when we organized specifically for it, that’s when it became culturally impactful.”
For any organization, it’s easy to find out their priorities—follow their budget.
“We made operations and TSMO a priority, and we became more accelerated and effective,” he said. “Without the knowledge I learned at the Operations Academy, I would not be sitting in this chair, I have no doubt about that.”
