Enter Your Innovative Gadgets and Ideas in PennDOT’s Build a Better Mousetrap Contest

Has one of your township employees built an innovative gadget or come up with a better way to do a job? If so, consider entering it in PennDOT’s 2021 Build a Better Mousetrap Competition.

Entries can be anything from the development of tools and equipment modifications to processes that increase safety, reduce costs, or improve efficiency or the quality of transportation. The deadline for submissions is March 5.

The contest provides four categories for submitting entries, with a potential winner in each. From among these winning entries, an overall winner of the contest will be chosen. The categories are: 
1) Inspection and data collection (automated/remote means, testing, time, etc.) 
2) Asset management techniques (GIS, mapping, decision support systems, etc.) 
3) Maintenance tools and methods (lifters, reachers, modifications, assembly, etc.) 
4) Transportation facilities improvements (storage, access, operations, services, etc.)

PennDOT will choose winners in March and announce them at the annual conference of the winners’ respective municipal associations. A committee of municipal road employees will judge the entries on cost savings/benefits to the community, ingenuity, transferability to others, and effectiveness.

The winning entries will be submitted into the national competition for prizes, and those winners will be announced at the annual LTAP/TTAP national conference next summer. All entries at the national level will be posted on the LTAP/TTAP website and compiled into an electronic booklet.

To download entry forms for the competition, go to gis.penndot.gov/ltap and click on “News.” A completed entry form must be returned by March 5 to PennDOT-LTAP, c/o PSATS, 4855 Woodland Drive, Enola, PA 17025 or email it to katkinson@psats.org.