AASHTO Journal - MnDOT’s Groshens Wins AASHTOWare Prismatic Award

Charlie Groshens – director of the project data management section and previously the supervisor of the labor compliance unit within the Minnesota Department of Transportation – recently received AASHTOWare’s 2025 Prismatic Legacy Award for his volunteer work on behalf of the program.

[Above photo by MnDOT. Graphic design by AASHTO.]

AASHTOWare, a division of the American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials, offers a suite of transportation software products delivered through a collaborative business model with state departments of transportation across the country.

Volunteers from those state DOTs are intricately involved in the decision-making processes regarding AASHTOWare products; providing the expert advice and insight that makes AASHTOWare’s software suite unique in the transportation industry.

To recognize and honor the valuable role state DOT volunteers play in its software development work, AASHTOWare created the Prismatic Legacy Award, which is bestowed on an impactful volunteer across the AASHTOWare suite.

Groshens received the 2025 Prismatic Legacy Award for his continued involvement in the AASHTOWare Project volunteer community.

Throughout his years of dedicated volunteer service, he has taken on numerous leadership roles, including leader of the Labor Group module technical review team, Technical Advisory Group coordinator, Project User Group vice chair, chair, past chair and, most recently, as a member of the Project Task Force or PTF.

His contributions throughout the last several decades have been vital in the ongoing development of the software suite’s Civil Rights and Labor Group module as well as the other modules within AASHTOWare’s software suite.

“It’s been fun to work with people from other states – and learning about their best practices helped us a lot,” he said. “The civil rights and labor compliance areas can be challenging, but using AASHTOWare has allowed us to standardize how contractor information goes into the system. It also helps make the data analysis process much more efficient; making information more readily available instead of generating boxes and boxes of paper documents we have to analyze for compliance issues – then store for three to four years.”

Groshens completed his term with AASHTOWare’s PTF in June 2024 and AASHTOWare noted that his subject matter expertise and “unwavering willingness” to participate in user community to help develop specific software modules “brought continuity and stability” to the PTF during times of membership changeover.

“We created the Prismatic Award specifically to honor the dedication of all the hardworking volunteers like Charlie Groshens,” noted Keith Platte, director of AASHTOWare. “He goes above and beyond to help AASHTOWare Project for the greater good of all state DOTs. His active involvement and contributions have been instrumental in driving our program forward,” Platte added. “We are incredibly grateful for his exceptional service and commitment to the team.”