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

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