The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) plays a key leadership role in sponsoring, sustaining, and guiding highway research. As a leader in the transportation research and technology (R&T) field, FHWA is working to improve its R&T program and to deploy innovations and technologies.

Stakeholders and the public are integral to FHWA R&T development and deployment activities. Stakeholder involvement includes influencing the highway R&T deployment during the process of developing and revising FHWA's R&T roadmaps. For example, FHWA's Infrastructure Research and Technology staff are working with other Federal, state, and local partner agencies, academia, and industry to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by promoting more sustainable cement and concrete technologies and collaborating with the Sustainable Pavements Program to encourage quantification.  A three-staged effort is used:

• Development – Identify practical and proven strategies ready for implementation or techniques needing additional research and development. Informational material is in development that highlights how these techniques can be implemented and quantified, and with feedback from stakeholders will be used to form the basis of technology transfer activities.
• Quantification – Solicit interested partners that are willing to benchmark current practices using metrics that will serve as a basis to understand the ability of these technologies to effectively reduce the embodied carbon of infrastructure materials. 
• Roll-out – Assist stakeholders to implement strategies to reach their defined goals.

The roadmapping process is just one of the many ways that stakeholders and the public are involved in establishing FHWA's research agenda. FHWA also establishes and maintains contacts with State DOT R&T programs, American Association of State Highway and Transportation Official (AASHTO) Research Advisory Committee, and the AASHTO Standing Committee on Research. In addition, the agency partners with others to make improvements to the national transportation system.