Financial responsibility
The Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency aims at cost-efficiency and good performance in its work and uses the funding allocated to it transparently and efficiently. The Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency strives to improve the efficiency of its operations, for example by developing its knowledge-based decisionmaking and operational planning. The starting point for achieving increased efficiency is that FTIA has access to as comprehensive and up-to-date source data and analyses as possible, together with an understanding of the impacts of decisions. More efficient transport infrastructure management is based on improved prioritisation and scheduling of management measures, assessing and managing impacts, and life cycle efficiency of transport infrastructure management.
In years to come, the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency will participate in balancing public finances as outlined in the Government Programme. Efforts to draw up a productivity programme were launched in late 2023 to find sustainable solutions for improving productivity.
Financial responsibility in procurement
The Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency strives to ensure that procurements are made efficiently and to a high standard. The costeffectiveness of procurements is promoted through active cooperation and dialogue with the market, careful procurement planning and competent competitive tendering processes. In addition, the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency manages risks in its procurements by requiring suppliers to have adequate financial stability based on turnover and by actively monitoring companies’ credit ratings.
One of the performance targets set by the Ministry of Transport and Communications for 2023 was that the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency has identified the most important measures by which it can influence the productivity of the infrastructure sector and demonstrate that it has made progress in them. Improved productivity plays a major role in the spending of common tax revenue and, consequently, in shouldering financial responsibility. To this end, the Finnish Transport Infrastructure took on an active role in working groups on productivity development in 2023 and, in particular, in integrating Lean thinking into project implementation.
The above picture of an interchange is related to the Main road 19 improvement project, which was completed on schedule and cost around EUR 1 million less than budgeted.
Drawing on financial data in decisionmaking
The Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency uses Tableau analytics tool for visualisation, reporting and analysis of data. On Tableau, financial information can be made more widely available to experts, which has succeeded in significantly improving cost awareness. FTIA has been able to draw on financial data more extensively in knowledge-based management, which has enabled better visualisation of information.
Financial data are tapped efficiently in decisionmaking and operational development. In track maintenance, for example, they have been combined with substance data to improve forecasting. Cost awareness has also been improved by developing contract management and importing contract information into Tableau. In addition to financial management, the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency also uses data in many other fields, such as communications, procurement and planning.
Analytics and automation are part of daily work at the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency and improve the efficiency of many processes. For example, software robotics is used in several financial processes. Robotics has been brought in to assist financial experts in manual and timeconsuming tasks, enabling them to focus their resources on more productive activities.
Reliability of investment cost estimates was improved
Cost estimates play a major role in the comparison and selection of options for transport infrastructure projects and their implementation solutions. To ensure that projects with the highest impact and best costbenefit ratio go ahead, the cost estimate of the planned project in question must be continuously known. Reliable information on the cost impacts of optional alignments in individual projects and their various implementation solutions must additionally be available. Continuous cost awareness also makes steering by costs possible in project planning to achieve the optimal end result.
In recent years, the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency has strongly developed tools and practices for producing reliable cost estimates at all design stages. With the help of the Ihku calculation service, detail can be flexibly added to the project's cost estimate as the planning progresses and more source data are available. Ihku makes it possible to not only easily and flexibly calculate a cost estimate for a project at any time but also to compare the cost impacts of implementation solutions and to respond to changes in the scales of projects. Accurate and informative cost assessment that factors in the characteristics and implementation conditions of the project also facilitates the identification, minimisation and assessment of costrelated risks.
Case: Case: development of automation in purchase invoice processing
The Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency processes more than 40,000 purchase invoices each year. By automating the processing of purchase invoices, FTIA aims to achieve savings in operating costs. Increased automation reduces the working time used to process and approve invoices.
For several years, the Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency has systematically developed the automation of purchase invoice processing and increased its level of automation. The processing of all purchase invoices that are currently suitable for this has been automated. Only invoices whose processing cannot reasonably be automated or that are currently not suitable for this, either because of accounting practices or for systems engineering reasons, are excluded.
The Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency engages in continuous cooperation with the Shared Services Centre for Finance and HR (Palkeet) and the system supplier to continue increasing the degree of automation. The future potential of automation can be influenced by means of systems engineering changes, modification of practices and stakeholder cooperation.
Image: Share of purchase invoices handled in a fully automated process in 2021–2023.
The higher the number of purchase invoices that can be processed automatically, the greater the direct cost savings achieved in service fees charged by Palkeet. In 2023, for example, savings of almost EUR 50,000 were achieved through purchase invoice automation.
In addition to direct cost savings, automation of purchase invoice processing also generates indirect savings as it reduces the need for manual work at different stages of the process. This frees up experts' working time for more productive tasks. The Finnish Transport Infrastructure Agency is constantly working to achieve a higher degree of automation in order to make the processing of purchase invoices as economical and efficient as possible.