Alberta’s Road Weather Information System (RWIS)Deployment – an Innovative Way to Outsource theRWIS Contract

摘要

The department of Alberta Infrastructure and Transportation plans to implement up to 75 newrnRWIS Environmental Sensing Stations (ESS) through an all-in-one turnkey approach thatrncombines the purchase, installation, maintenance and operational requirements into one contract.rnThe primary advantage with the turnkey approach is to tie the delivery of all aspects of the RWISrnnetwork to one single provider and in turn allows the department to build an end-resultrnperformance-based contract. Through a Request-for-Proposal (RFP) released in November 2004,rnthe department solicited proposals for this turnkey concept. The decisions on the technologiesrnneeded, which manufacturer's equipment to use, who installs and maintains the RWIS stations,rnand how they fit in with the value-added meteorologists (VAM), were all left to the proponents.rnThe pavement temperature performance verification was one innovative feature that wasrnspecifically incorporated into this turnkey concept. Another innovative feature of the RFP was tornsolicit an alternate financial plan whereby the proponents could assume ownership of a portion ofrnthe RWIS network and market the services to other clients for revenue-generating.rnAt the closing of the RFP in January 2005, five proposals were received. They were evaluated onrnthe basis of technical merits using the criteria presented in the RFP without knowledge of thernprices; the final score was a combination of the technical and price scores. The preferredrnproponent with the highest proposal score was selected from this process and the ensuingrnnegotiations took another month before a contract was successfully awarded. Telvent Canada Ltd.rnOf Calgary along with its partners, Earth Tech Canada Inc. of Ontario and MeridianrnEnvironmental Technology Inc. of North Dakota and their supplier, Surface Systems Inc. of St.rnLouis, is the province's RWIS Service Provider (RSP).rnThe RSP has begun its work with the launch of the first Local Area Forecasts (LAF) in the lastrnwinter month of the 2004/05 season. This paper will include updates on the awarded RWISrncontract, the work-in-progress and any important lessons learned.