INTERVIEW TERRY BERGAN, IRD
Driven by data S
Kevin Borras talks to International Road Dynamics’ President and CEO Terry Bergan about his 30 years at the helm
ome people would have you believe that rules are there to be broken; that theories are there to be disproved. Whether or not International Road Dynamics’ President and CEO Terry Bergan is
one of those people won’t be discussed in this article, but one thing is for sure, he certainly doesn’t give much credence to the adage “do one thing and do it well”. IRD’s wide-ranging remit of ITS solutions, coupled with the Canadian company’s continuing (and increasing) success, would suggest that Bergan’s ethos is more akin to “do nine or 10 things and do them all really, really well.” Last year marked IRD’s 35th anniversary, the Saskatoon, Saskatch-
ewan-based company having been founded by Terry’s father, Dr Arthur Bergan, a man who he describes as a “visionary”. Dr Bergan is widely acknowledged to have spearheaded the development of a weigh-in-motion scale capable of weighing trucks travelling at ‘high- way speeds’. He founded IRD in 1980 with the aim of specialising in the area of weigh-in-motion, commercial vehicle operations enforce- ment and intelligent transportation systems. IRD currently produces and markets its technologies in over 75 countries around the world, generating gross annual revenues in excess of US$50 million and employs close to 350 people in six countries. The story really begins in 1986 when in need of some capital IRD
sought the help of venture capitalists – Terry Bergan resigned from his job with a Saskatchewan engineering firm and took up the post
of President of International Road Dynamics (he become CEO in 1994) and the rest, as they say, is history. So how did we, or more pertinently he, get here?
A DIGITAL REVOLUTION In the 10 years of Thinking Highways’ lifetime, the ITS sector has changed considerably, not quite beyond all recognition, but if you have a copy of our very first issue just have a look at the Advertisers Index for proof of that, if proof were needed. Terry Bergan has rid- den that wave of technological change and is very clear about what he considers to be the most significant technological development in that last decade. “When you have been around for 36 years you see a lot of change.
I remember in the mid-1980s we suddenly discovered we could send a digital signal so instead of running a dozen wires, we could send two. It was a revelation to us…and a revolution! “These wires were a huge impediment to what we were doing
in those days, which was essentially R&D into the deployment of weigh-in-motion (WIM) into the marketplace. All of a sudden they were a thing of the past. We’ve moved on significantly since then – through fibre optics and now into the wireless realm with CDPD, GSM, LTE; the evolution of the computer through MS-DOS, Linux, UNIX, firmware, embedded software, the vast improvements in PC boards with pick and place and supers- mart technology. Plus there’s the change in the cost of memory as machine vision has moved into our marketplace and we’re now working with cameras that go beyond the optical spectrum that we can see and we can start to sense things in and around the vehicle and at the site. There’s so many things, it’s hard to choose just one,” he says before I ask him to do just that. “But going digital has been the most important tech- nological innovation for IRD. In 1980 we put one lane of WIM on the I-494 in Minneapo- lis and it needed a construction trailer full of computers complete with air conditioning and heating. Now all that, and more, can be done by a 2inch x 2inch circuit board.”
Customer-driven: Terry Bergan at IRD’s Saskatoon assembly area
CONNECTED CANADA SUPPLEMENT 2
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