| Summary: | With the increasing need for highway maintenance and the decreasingly available funds, the Texas Department of Transportation (TxDOT) Austin District has sought to better utilize maintenance section employee resources by implementing a compressed workweek. The primary goal of this thesis is to establish a framework and methodology to study the effects of a compressed workweek on maintenance crews in both rural and urban environments. Secondly, this thesis will provide a background of best practices of popular flexible work arrangements, including compressed workweeks, telework, and flextime. The compressed workweek is a type of flexible work arrangement that allows employees to work longer days during a part of the week in exchange for a partial or full day off later in the week. Compressed workweeks can offer numerous benefits to maintenance crews, including increased production, less set up and shut down time per week, decreased operating costs, reduced overhead, and increased employee morale. TxDOT will implement a six-month pilot project in two rural maintenance sections and one urban section. Compressed workweeks have proven to be successful in other districts with rural maintenance sections, but application of a compressed workweek in an urban maintenance section has yet to be studied. Therefore, maintenance crew activity data from previous years will be compared to data collected during the trial period to understand changes in productivity and to estimate vehicle operating costs. Lastly, surveys of maintenance employees will be conducted throughout the study to solve any personal issues that arise as well as determine employee satisfaction with the new schedule. === text
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