Making it Happen- from Idea to Implementation and Beyond
In response to our client’s request, we also developed a module for tracking material inventory, purchases, and stockpiles. Previously, our client estimated the costs of these materials. The county had no way to determine how much material from each supplier might be in a given stockpile, so they used the mean price from all their suppliers, assuming that the amount of material from each supplier was approximately equal. If this assumption were not correct, or if the prices from two suppliers differed slightly, the county’s estimated cost for the material in that tockpile could be quite inaccurate. Our module avoids this problem by calculating the weighted average cost of materials in the inventory, based on the bid price and amount of material purchased or placed in the stockpiles. This weighted average cost is applied to materials as they are used for maintenance activities. We also created reports showing a historical log of materials purchased and a summary of materials in the current inventory. These reports can also be used to show the unused balance on annual contracts for specific materials. This additional feature was not intended in the original design of the module, but it was discovered during testing.
The prototype application was demonstrated to our client in April of 2001. Based on the results of this demonstration, we modified the user interface so that the entire data entry form would be visible without having to scroll the display. We also reformatted several of the reports to calculate subtotals and totals where appropriate. In August of 2001, we demonstrated our application to the LTAP staff. They provided useful feedback, suggesting minor changes that would make the application more appropriate for city street departments as well as county highway departments. During this period, we also modified the labor cost calculations to automatically assign the appropriate pay rates, instead of requiring the user to pick a pay rate for each activity.
In October of 2001, we prepared our client’s employee and equipment data for final delivery. We also redefined their road sections, activities, and materials tables to correct inaccuracies and omissions. During an on-site product evaluation using the White County Highway Department’s hardware and wireless Internet connection, we discovered that the speed of our application was prohibitively slow. The users also complained that the proposed interface was inconvenient and that our proposed data entry workflow was inefficient. A complete redesign of the user interface was necessary to correct these deficiencies. Our client also requested that we use the sick time and vacation time entries in the work records to calculate the remaining sick time and vacation time balances for each employee. These changes were made, and version 1 of the application was delivered for the client’s use starting in January 2002.
Before we finished with version 1, we had already begun planning for version 2 and beyond.
Future versions may include a more robust interface with our Internet GIS application, and
modules for equipment maintenance, parts inventory, budget forecasting, and maintenance of
bridges, culverts, and signs.
Development Methodology
Some time in the middle of our development process, the decision was made to develop White
County’s road maintenance management application more fully in hope that it could be marketed
to other clients, under the name “eroads”. In the beginning of the project, we focused on White
County’s specific needs. As our emphasis shifted from a single client to the broader user
community, our development team had to shift our thinking from the specific back to the general
in order to make sure that eroads would be appropriate for a wide variety of users. Our approach
was still need-based, but now the design team would ask “is this need specific to White County,
or is it shared by the larger user community?”
