PennDOT Honors Star of Excellence Recipients Agency Recognizes 32 Employees Across Pennsylvania, including PennDOT District 8

Harrisburg, PA – Pennsylvania Department of Transportation (PennDOT) Secretary Yassmin Gramian today recognized 32 PennDOT employees for their outstanding performance with the Star of Excellence Award, PennDOT’s highest recognition. Two employees from PennDOT’s District 8, which represents Adams, Cumberland, Dauphin, Franklin, Lebanon, Lancaster, Perry and York counties, and 10 employees from PennDOT’s Central Office were among the honorees.

“These employees represent the incredible people on the PennDOT team,” Gramian said. “With a focus on innovation, customer service, mobility and connectivity, they work tirelessly each day to provide safe and efficient transportation for Pennsylvania’s residents.” 

Gramian and other department executives honored winners Sheila Hromadik and Michael Deiter from District 8, during a virtual ceremony. 

“Sheila and Mike are outstanding employees who are dedicated to ensuring those who live and work in Pennsylvania have the best transportation system possible,” Acting District 8 Executive Chris Drda said. “Congratulations to them both for this well-deserved recognition.” 

Mike Deiter 

Transportation Construction Manager 3 

Mike Deiter currently oversees construction projects in Dauphin and Lebanon counties valued at over $225 million. This includes the $104.7 million widening and reconstruction of Interstate 83 near Harrisburg. Projects of this scope and complexity come with a lot of pitfalls, but under Mike’s guidance, the project is progressing smoothly toward completion. 

Mike’s previous experience as a highway design project manager allows him to identify constructability issues during the design process, resulting in reduced costs and fewer construction delays. 

He was selected to oversee the constructability of replacing the John Harris Memorial (South) Bridge, which carries I-83 over the Susquehanna River between Dauphin and Cumberland counties. Working on an aggressive schedule, Mike helped the team meet the milestone dates for this project, which is estimated to cost over $500 million.

He served on a committee to develop a statewide approach in handling contractor claims related to COVID-19. The committee developed guidance all PennDOT districts could use to handle claims. Mike’s knowledge and experience helped save the department more than $200,000 in COVID cost settlements. Mike has a well-earned reputation for his professionalism, dependability and dedication. 

Although he shoulders a tremendous amount of responsibility, Mike takes time to mentor and pass along his knowledge and expertise to others. He is respected by everyone he works with both inside and outside the department.

Mike resides in Duncannon, PA.

Sheila Hromadik 

 

Civil Engineer (Bridges)

When Sheila Hromadik was appointed to the District 8 bridge maintenance coordinator position, she didn’t just hit the ground running – she flew. With less than a year at the job, she was doing the work of two people during the transition to fill the second coordinator position. She saw this as an opportunity to redefine the district’s Bridge Structure Maintenance Program. 

Sheila took advantage of specialized skills in a co-worker to integrate a new in-house structure maintenance permitting process. 

She played a key role in overhauling the district’s outdated program for bridges under eight feet. 

A significant accomplishment was reviving the district’s dormant department force box culvert program. In 2020, during the middle of the COVID pandemic, Sheila successfully facilitated two box culvert projects in separate counties. She managed on-site activities, so the projects stayed on time and on budget. She earned the respect of county bridges crews by getting into the trench and working side by side with them.

Sheila oversaw preconstruction planning and coordination with district staff, guided the county staff through the Engineering and Construction Management process, and introduced an intensive new after action review process.

Through her leadership and hard work, Sheila demonstrated a cost savings of $150,000 to $200,000 per project.

Sheila resides in Carlisle, PA.

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Also honored during the virtual ceremony were Central Office winners Amanda M. Frank, Jodi Nolt, Larissa Newton, Ngani Ndimbie. Connie Sprague, Daniel J. Whetzel, Michele Harter, P.E., Raymond Green, Anthony Stever, and Shane Moyer.

Bureau of Innovations (BOI)

Amanda M. Frank

Management Analyst 2 

As a management analyst for the Bureau of Innovations (BOI) tasked with leading organizational change efforts, Amanda Frank has provided department wide support to PennDOT project teams. From project analysis and data collection to meeting facilitation and development of implementation plans, Amanda’s leadership and support have enabled teams to reduce processing time, streamline program processes, engage employees and consultants in problem-solving initiatives, and ensure process improvement initiatives are able to advance effectively.

In 2020, Amanda independently developed a PennDOT Lean Dashboard representing the cost and time savings resulting from employee-driven and BOI-led process improvement projects. That dashboard recently acted as an at-a-glance resource for executives as they prepared for budget briefings. It will also serve as a reference for the Secretary during her upcoming "Lean Briefing" call with Governor Wolf, assisting the Secretary in communicating PennDOT's accomplishments aligning with his LeanPA initiative.

In 2020, Amanda worked to develop templates and best practices for virtual facilitations, enabling the bureau to host several events virtually that might otherwise have been held in-person. Her efforts led to an estimated annual cost avoidance of more than $6,700 in employee travel costs and materials usage. 

Amanda resides in New Cumberland, PA.

Jodi Nolt

Administrative Office 2

In 2020, Jodi was responsible for the implementation of SAP Concur for Travel in PennDOT which went live January 2020. Jodi planned for three months to facilitate a successful implementation and trained nearly 1,000 employees on the program. Jodi was on the road for weeks providing training, both in-person and virtual, in the field and central office.

By conducting the SAP Concur for Travel training in person at the district office, field personnel were not required to travel to Harrisburg for training.  If Train-the-Trainer training would have been held, two (2) people from each District would have needed to travel. Overnight accommodations and subsistence would have been required for eight (8) Districts, assuming overnight travel would not have been needed for representatives from District 3-0, 5-0 and 8-0. Cost avoidance of overnight stay, subsistence, and lost production totals nearly $7,456.00.

Over many weekends during the winter months, from her home in Carlisle, Jodi can be found putting together the travel arrangements for snowstorm Mobile Equipment Teams. 

Larissa Newton

Digital Director

Larissa Newton is the Digital Director in the Press Office. Her work at PennDOT truly embodies nearly all of our strategic themes. To say that she is responsible for building, collaborating on, or supporting innovation, customer service, recruitment, and leveraging resources in our internal and external communications is an understatement. On many occasions, she developed or built a way to do something better that often meant much more work for her but was the best result for the department.

 

During the pandemic, she (in concert with Project Delivery staff) developed an Online Public Engagement guideline to ensure staff knew the available tools and protocols to reach out to customers and partners in a virtual environment. This has instituted and expanded the use of Facebook Events to promote online public meetings for construction projects. 

Her guidance and ownership of standards for our website has reined in spending on consultant-developed websites overall, including special initiatives and construction projects. She has also ensured separate social-media assets are not created beyond the department's tools or worked to bring in-house those that were previously created. 

Her work on the www.penndot.gov/funding and related subsites has been recognized by department leadership and our consultant team. Her focus on bringing accessibility and approachability to department communications has been recognized by customers. 

Larissa lives in Mechanicsburg, PA.

Ngani Ndimbie

Executive Policy Specialist

Ngani Ndimbie is an Executive Policy Specialist in the Policy Office. She has been one of PennDOT's most effective champions of promoting equity and combating structural racism in transportation. In doing so, she has demonstrably contributed to supporting our values and has advanced specific PennDOT strategic directions. 

She was a key driver of the Policy Office's landmark study and report, "Dismantling Systemic Racism and Inequities" which took a 360-degree view of equity issues and racial biases. She has leveraged her background in community organizing to help expand the voice of our stakeholders to include more people of color, low income and disadvantaged communities, and especially those who are either overburdened by transportation's externalities or underserved by its facilities and services. 

An example of this work is her representation on PennDOT's behalf on the Equity & Investment Committee of the Transportation Climate Initiative (TCI), where she was one of the select presenters for the TCI Equity Webinar. 

She is a leading voice in the Department in support of adopting micro mobility devices in order to connect users from underserved neighborhoods with fixed-route transit services; and through her work with our Office of Transformational Technologies, she has been instrumental in keeping the needs and interests of disadvantaged and disabled populations central in the development of vehicle automation in Pennsylvania.

Ngani lives in Harrisburg, PA.

Connie Sprague

Safety Manager (HR Analyst 4)

Connie Sprague is the Employee Safety Division Manager in Highway Administration. She leads by example and provides leadership and guidance to all ensuring they have the resources needed to maintain a safe work environment. 

She worked with her staff to review the ever-changing guidance being issued from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the PA Department of Health (DOH) from the start of the pandemic. She was in constant communication with the DOH and then coordinating with team members updates that necessitated changes to policies, procedures, and developing protocols to conform with all CDC and DOH guidance. 

New protocols were developed and implemented as well as adjusting existing processes and procedures to incorporate COVID safety measures. She and her team developed COVID safety materials, safety talks, and related materials that were shared as examples for other agencies. 

She led the effort to develop protocols for our field staff to balance heat safety and COVID safety to ensure the safety of staff during all operations. Connie is recognized by her peers as a leader in the Safety field and district staff often comment about her willingness to help develop the COVID related safety protocols. 

Connie lives in Worthville, PA

Daniel J. Whetzel

Section Chief, Emergency Incident Management

Dan Whetzel is the Emergency Incident Management Section Chief of the Bureau of Maintenance and Operations (BOMO). During the first several months of the Governor’s order to close state offices and order all non-essential workforce to stay at home, Dan made PennDOT’s Area Command a stable presence when things were changing daily. He led the Area Command tirelessly for three straight months and was the central point of contact for many questions, documents, decisions, and overall coordination of an agency which had just been broken apart from daily regimented practices to an agency that was reacting daily to new challenges associated with construction shutdowns, work stoppages, uncertainty, and confusion. 

In the first few days of the pandemic, disinfectant and cleaning supplies were exhausted nationwide. A critical component to restarting even basic county emergency maintenance crews. Dan developed a plan to locate, order, and distribute supplies to field staff. He worked directly with the Department of Corrections (DOC) even dispatching our own staff to the DOC supply warehouse to bring back the needed cleaning supplies, and then coordinated the delivery to the locations where they were needed.

He and his staff helped to bring PennDOT back to a more stable operational platform, reduced the confusion, and updated staff on the questions they had.

Dan lives in Enola, PA.

Michele Harter, P.E.

Program Manager 1

Michele Harter, P.E., Contract Management Section Chief, provided swift, professional guidance to our customers during the state mandated shutdown. Construction projects were placed on hold to minimize exposure. She provided guidance to support these temporary suspension orders. 

PennDOT worked with industry partners on solutions for restarting construction projects with focus of avoiding the spread of the virus. She was the PennDOT lead of the Lettings, Award, and Notice to Proceed (NTP) group of the construction restart team. A multi-organizational project delivery team was formed to identify critical operations and a document was created providing guidance to restart field activities consistent with DOH guidance. 

She created template letters for districts to notify consultants of construction inspection and design fieldwork that could resume. Firms were requested to submit COVID-19 Safety Plans; she led a team responsible for the review/acceptance of 128 statewide Safety Plans. 

PennDOT faced a cash flow crisis as motor license fund revenues declined and a difficult decision was made to pause construction lettings due to these shortfalls. A Cash Flow Team was established, and she led a sub-team responsible to provide graphical representations of actual and projected revenues and expenditures in various appropriations. Summary information provided current and projected cash flow, ultimately supporting a restart of the letting program. 

She was also a Governor’s Award of Excellence Finalist in 2020 and was nominated by the Department of Labor and Industry for her extraordinary work. She tackled all special assignments while leading the Contract Management Section within the Bureau of Project Delivery and assisted with specification changes, Risk Allocation Committee items, On the Job Training (OJT) System rollout, ECMS activities, consultant agreement concerns, etc. 

Michele lives in Middletown, PA.

Raymond Green

Transportation Planning Manager

Raymond Green is a Transportation Planning Manager and the Section Manager in the South Central PA Section of the Transportation Program Development Division of the Program Center. He is responsible for the development, coordination, and implementation of transportation plans and programs as required by federal and state laws, regulations, and policies for the six (6) Metropolitan Planning Organizations (MPOs) in South Central Pennsylvania. He supervises and supports the development each MPO's, and transit authorities’ Transportation Improvements Program (TIP), Twelve Year Program (TYP), and Long-Range Transportation Plan for highways and public transportation projects.

He provides oversight and guidance in the coordination and preparation of each MPO’s biennial Unified Planning Work Program (UPWP). Once the UPWP is approved, he is responsible for providing oversight and guidance in the management of the funding. The funding amounts for the six (6) Planning Regions under Ray's area of Supervision total over $6.4 Million. 

In addition to performing his assigned duties related to transportation program development and management, Ray has been engaged in supporting PennDOT efforts to address social equity and address under-served communities. He has been the PennDOT Planning Deputate representative in a collaborative effort with the Federal Highway Administration and several Pennsylvania Metropolitan Planning Organizations in developing Environmental Justice guidance. He was selected by Executive Staff to represent the Office of Planning on the Dismantling Systemic Racism and Inequities Workgroup for PennDOT. 

Ray lives in Harrisburg, PA.

Anthony Stever

Operating Program Division Manager

Anthony Stever, Operating Program Division Manager, Bureau of Public Transportation, has been the lead in implementing PennDOT’s Fixed Route Intelligent Transportation System (FRITS) project. This is a complex project that touches many aspects of a transit agencies' maintenance and operations. The technology will allow transit agencies to provide real time data to their customers via web and mobile apps, dynamic message boards. FRITS allows Transit Agencies to deploy state of the art technology to provide better service and understand their customer base by improving communication between driver and dispatch and collecting key operational data to make better service decisions. 

During the COVID-19 crisis he found ways to ensure that grants were reviewed, processed, and executed in an expedient fashion to get critical funding to transit agencies so they could continue to provide service. He kept in close contact with agencies to provide weekly status reports to the Deputy Secretary and the Federal Transit Administration so that they knew what service and fare adjustments were being made in 53 transit agencies across the state. He knew what agencies were offering free fares, what cleaning policies were being employed, and what routes were being canceled or modified. He worked directly with legal and the multimodal administration unit to ensure that additional funding was provided to transit agencies to keep their doors open and the buses running.

Anthony lives in Halifax, PA.

Shane Moyer

Director, Bureau of Support Services

Shane Moyer, Director for the Bureau of Support Services for Driver and Vehicle Services (DVS) played a crucial role throughout 2020 ensuring continued operations of statewide driver, vehicle, and photo licensing facilities while maintaining safety of both customers and DVS staff during the COVID-19 crisis. Shane and his staff lead the effort to identify essential staff to be deployed to the Harrisburg Riverfront Office Center (ROC) to continue back-end, mission-critical functions that could not be performed via telework. 

In early April, as DVS planned for the eventual opening of the ROC, Shane spearheaded the plan to staff the ROC leading up to reopening vehicle counter services. He directed multiple components of a statewide plan to bring DVS back online to service customers through the safe closing and consequent reopening of all driver licensing and photo sites along with services at the Riverfront Office Center. His personal interactions with plexiglass companies ensured the availability of this important item to construct sneeze guards. Through his actions in procuring this and other necessary supplies, protective screens were successfully installed on time and prior to the ROC and driver and photo license centers opening for business. Overall, Shane helped keep 1400 DVS employees appraised during the initial COVID-19 mitigation efforts and continues to do so as changes unfold.

Shane lives in Ashland, PA.

The Star of Excellence Awards are presented annually to employees who represent the department’s values of service, performance and integrity. The recipients represent a variety of organizational positions, spanning from highway maintenance and driver and vehicle services workers, to traffic control specialists, communications staff and design and engineering specialists.

MEDIA CONTACT: David Thompson, 717-418-5018

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