TRP spotlight: Juan David Pava

Juan David Pava is the safety programs unit chief at the Illinois Department of Transportation's Bureau of Safety Programs and Engineering. He has been with IDOT for a decade in numerous positions.

In his current position, held since 2017, he is responsible for interpreting federal and state laws, writing policy, and providing guidance to districts regarding work zone safety, pedestrian and bicycle safety, and railroad highway crossings safety. Pava reviews and approves transportation management plans, develops work zones policies and procedures, evaluates new technologies, reviews and develops training materials, and trains employees on work zone traffic control and flagging procedures, among other tasks.

Pava is currently the Technical Review Panel chair for project R27-186, “Correlation between Work Zone Exposure and Work Zone-Related Fatal and A-Injury Crashes,” which is evaluating the correlation between work zone exposure and work zone crashes. The study is looking to develop crash modification factors for work zones specific to IDOT standards.

Pava has been a member of the TRP for other projects as well, first as a representative of the Research Implementation Unit and more recently as a representative of the Bureau of Safety Programs and Engineering. Some more recent projects include R27-155, which evaluated ways to improve the effectiveness of smart work zone technologies, and R27-097, which evaluated the effectiveness of flashing yellow arrows for protected/permissive left turns, among others.

“At BSPE, we are constantly working on improving policy and procedures for the safety of road users,” Pava said. “We are diligently working on determining the path forward to comply with new crash testing federal requirements, providing guidance for the interpretation and implementation of safety policies and procedures to the districts, and administering the railway-highway crossings safety improvement program, with the goal of saving lives statewide.”

Prior to becoming the safety programs unit chief, Pava was the state work zone safety engineer, and before that, he served as the acting research implementation engineer for IDOT, where he created the department’s research implementation planning and tracking framework. He is a licensed professional engineer in Illinois and holds a Bachelor of Science in civil and environmental engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.