Each of the elements of the Quality Circle as well as the overall MM components are assessed according to the ladder of development. This procedure can be carried out in five different depths, depending on resources and budget.
These are starting from the least ambitious and least effort requiring and ending with the most ambitious:
-The self assessment tool - a short, structured questionnaire which serves as a first and quick scan of the quality status of the mobility management in the city. The questionnaire consists of 25 questions which refer to the 12 elements of the quality circle. The assessment can be done within half an hour to two hours.
- Instructions for Implementation. A checklist and instructions for implementing MaxQ you can find here.
- Various audits. For this a clearly longer questionnaire is used (which can also be found by clicking through the Quality Circle) for each element. The depth can be varied according to ambition and resources:
- Small internal audit: done within the MM-team of the city, without any external involvement
- Internal audit: persons and institutions beyond the MM-team are involved, at least the political level but if possible also external stakeholders
- External audit: same as above, but with the involvement of an external auditor, that can also help to benchmark with other cities
- Certification and benchmarking: this can be done when quality is already well established and the ambition is to progress toward total quality management in MM - meaning certification according to a CEN-Norm and attaining an average level of over 4 on the ladder of development.
The main idea of these procedures is that they assesses the current practice of mobility management within the city in all its aspects and that it can be used as a guidance to make further improvements.
Moreover, it should be both challenging, feasible and useful for cities, irrespective of the current status of their MM application. For example,
- a city that has recently organised a successful car free day (with high participation rates of citizens and positive feed-back from politicians) but with little or no knowledge of the MM-concept, should after applying the QMSMM-audit get inspired by the whole range of other city wide and site based mobility management measures and get guidance on how to invest more systematically in MM.
- a city, with a long tradition in mobility management - the concept of MM is known among the local politicians and city administrators - should be able to assess their current status in MM and benchmark their results with other experienced city’s in Europe and be awarded for their good performance