AASHTO Journal - Podcast: Talking with the Mississippi DOT Chief of Staff

Jeff Ely, chief of staff for the Mississippi Department of Transportation, recently appeared on the agency’s ‘Extra Mile’ podcast to discuss various state transportation projects, the department’s leadership development program, its workforce recruitment efforts, and much more.

[Above photo by Mississippi DOT]

A professional engineer who started with the agency in 2002, Ely has held a variety of positions before being promoted to chief of staff in 2022.

On the podcast, he covered a wide range of topics – especially issues related to “contraflow” operations designed to enhance hurricane evacuation efforts.

“Hurricane Katrina may have been the last time we did this,” Ely explained. “You’ve got a lot of people that are leaving home and they don’t know what they’re leaving or what they’re getting into or when they’ll be able to return. We are always hopeful a storm isn’t as bad as anticipated or there’s not as much damage as expected and people are able to get back into their communities pretty quickly. But during Katrina, it was really bad; a lot of highways blocked and a lot of interstates blocked, too.”

He noted that Mississippi DOT front line personnel were heavily engaged in clearing roadways during that storm.

“We had to clear the highways so that emergency vehicles could get in and help people that that did not get out of town,” Ely said. “On a side topic here, but I went on a couple of mission trips with youth groups some weeks after Katrina to help clean up. I cannot imagine being one of our crew going in as a first responder and seeing all that damage right first hand. That imagery really sticks with you. Lord willing we don’t go through that again.”

Ely also discussed the agency’s newly revamped professional development program, which aims to help cultivate the next generation of transportation leaders for the state.

“Probably 15 years ago we established a program that helped us develop up and coming leaders; but we really hadn’t done a lot with it since 2007,” he said. “So one of my goals [on becoming chief of staff] was to get that stood back up and help develop the people that are moving into roles of leadership here within the department.”
Ely pointed out that leadership development is but one of the many tactics Mississippi DOT is using to address a growing workforce shortage in the transportation sector.

“People are our greatest resource but our numbers have are down significantly from years past,” he said. “I say we’re somewhere in the ballpark of between 2,500 and 2,600 employees, but if we were ideally staffed, we would be closer to 3,000 employees – and a lot of that shortage is in the area of our maintenance technicians. New salary structures have helped us recruit, and we’ve done a tremendous [recruiting] job, but with every new person that we bring on, there’s a retiree or somebody moving on. So we have to keep working at it.”

To heat the full podcast, click here.