Lifecycle System Support

Our philosophy is to provide complete solutions for our clients. We have in-depth experience in all phases of transportation-related application development, deployment, operations, and maintenance. We pride ourselves in providing: 1) System solutions that are easy-to-use and component-based so that clients can deploy priority ITS components and add components in a "plug and play" fashion as needs grow; 2) Systems with much lower lifecycle/maintenance costs than other comparable systems; and 3) Robust and scalable open architecture systems that support multiple roadway device brands, data sharing and center-to-center capabilities.

ITS Planning

The Open Roads staff assists clients in all phases of ITS planning including transportation engineering analysis; System migration planning; Regional architecture development; System migration; ITS field device assessment; and RFP specification development. With an understanding of the range of challenges that clients face, we uniquely provide a balanced view of the application of ITS and associated technologies.

Commercial-Off-The-Self Solutions

Open Roads provides a stellar, full-featured Advanced Transportation Management System (ATMS), OpenTMS Enterprise. This system has been successfully deployed in less than two months along with bringing Transportation Management Centers from partial to 100% operations. Activities include:

• Specifying, and procuring the required hardware,
• Delivery and configuration of the ATMS software including the GIS maps,
• Delivery of a full set of documentation,
• Testing the integration with existing and new field devices,
• Interviewing and hiring contract staff to operate the center,
• Extensive training course for the operations and system administration staff, and
• Setting up the client Configuration Control Board and system maintenance policies and procedures.

Operations and Maintenance

Open Roads provides proactive operations and maintenance support. Per operations, we conduct operator system training, provide operator interview sessions to get first-hand user feedback, and provide technical support for after-action reports and routine performance measure reporting. Per maintenance, our support includes a 24 x 7 x 365 Help Desk or, if desired, on-site system administration support. We have a proven formal Configuration Management process to manage system upgrades and the addition of customized functionality. We provide tools for equipment inventory, work order management, preventive maintenance scheduling, and associated reporting. Our products monitor system and network/connectivity health status, and field device health status with the ability to alert the appropriate personnel of impending or existing problems via email or pager.

Training

Open Roads provides excellent new and refresher training. This is accomplished in multiple formats including classroom training, interactive computer-based training, and over-the-shoulder training. With our interactive computer-based training system, the trainer can generate site-specific scenarios to use during the training sessions. This provides for a means to train users on past scenarios that are pertinent to either their urban or rural roadway environments.

Proven Processes and Procedures

Open Roads utilizes established software engineering processes and procedures based on "best practices" of the Software Engineering Institutes (SEI) Capability Maturity Model (CMM). Having these methods in-place promotes repeatable, successful results. These processes span both our management and technical disciplines.

Standards

Open Roads has fully embraced the use of ITS and industry standards within all their projects. We believe that standards benefit our efforts and products in three ways. First, standards limit the possible design patterns for a system. While, at first, this might seem a limitation, when standards embody "best-practices", they lead to better designed, developed, and maintainable systems. Second, standards provide the means for hardware and/or software to interoperate and exchange of data and control. Last, new components can be added without a redesign of the system. Because proprietary interfaces go against all three of these principles, we implement open architecture systems. We have in-depth experience with ITS and industry standards including NTCIP, Center-to-center protocols, communications protocols, database standards (TMDD, SQL), emergency management and inter-operability standards, geographical information system standards, and Internet standards.