TERRY BERGAN, IRD
MANY FINGERS, MANY PIES IRD have a significant presence in at least 10 different industry disciplines (WIM, Electronic Toll Collection, Traffic Management, Truck Compliance, Traffic Monitoring, Traffic Data Collection, Bridge Maintenance, Access Con- trol, Fleet Telematics, and Traffic Safety) some clearly evolve and change faster than others, but of all the “pies” that IRD have “fingers” in, which one does Bergan believe has evolved the quickest and why is that the case? “What we started out with in 1980 was data
and the one thing that has changed beyond all recognition is the ability to store vast amounts of data,” he replies. “From our side of the industry it revolutionised our ability to weigh trucks in motion and get information. Part of what ITS was about in those days was trying to find a market for all that data and the obvious market was the truck inspection station, although they were called truck weigh stations back then. “The implementation of wireless technology has meant that we
Above: Mobile VWS enforcement; right: VWS deployed in Sweden (top) and Washington State (bottom)
But doesn’t every company worth its salt say that? How do you
go about reinforcing that ethos and ensuring it’s not just a Googled mission statement? “Well, one side of that is that we’re an owner-operator company
can communicate that data over large distances and that those weigh stations became inspection stations. All of a sudden we weren’t just measuring weight, we were able to measure safety from a number of different portals – now more than 98 per cent of trucks on the highway don’t have to stop. The sensors are no longer on the weigh station ramp, they’re out on the highway. We’re now at the point where we have virtual weigh stations so one operator can be working on a number of different inspection stations but from one location,” he says with enthusiasm entirely undimmed. “This innovation has been driven by need – safety, efficiency, reli-
ability and so on, but it’s amazing how the WIM sector has com- pletely embraced the technology.” So how has IRD changed under Terry Bergan’s stewardship?
Thinking Highways’ 10th anniversary neatly coincides with Ber- gan’s 30th at the helm and in that time he has not only seen a revo- lution in technology, but also in the needs and requirements of his customers. “The challenge for me when I joined IRD was that it was essen-
tially an R&D company and I was with an engineering firm that was doing pretty well, but what IRD were doing seemed really interest- ing and of course at that point IVHS (Intelligent Vehicle Highway Systems), as ITS was then, was looking for a market and everyone was effectively in the same boat. The changes happened when the R&D elements themselves became a project deliverable – cli- ents now expected a different degree of project management. What also changed was the structure of the company and how you execute operations – we started getting into ISO and all the quality reforms and trying to promote our company through what it can do for the customer, whereas today our whole reason for being is to help our customers be successful by providing a superior service of excellent quality.”
www.thinkinghighways.com 3
that has evolved to the point whereby people take responsibility for what they do. For us a family it was a bit of a challenge, and ulti- mately we’re a public company today, but it was all about letting go of that control and divesting responsibility to our employees,” he says, thoughtfully. “ITS is all about the people – the products and their quality are ultimately all about the people. You need a strong HR team and a culture within the company built around that com- modity – the human resource. You have to care about the individ- ual, you have to care about the family.” Which, it’s safe to assume, is very little to do with installing a table
tennis table in the lunch room and therapeutic fish tanks in the reception area. “No, you have to develop an environment where people feel
like they are part of something that’s going somewhere, celebrate success and be honest about failure. It’s simple – that’s how the company has operated since day one. It’s even true when we make an acquisition – the latest one was the German WIM spe- cialists PAT, who were a competitor of ours, and the people that have moved over with us have embraced the culture of IRD, it’s a culture of caring and success. Their performances reflect that. We’re a team and that team is worldwide. We have close to 150 people at our Saskatoon headquarters and an additional 200 staff at our subsidiaries in China, India, Chile, Mexico and the US. We have quite a footprint.
DRIVING INNOVATION There’s one question that I put to virtually everyone I interview, whether it’s for the magazine or for an audio piece, and that’s ‘is the ITS industry as far advanced as you thought it might be 10 years ago?’ In 2006 there was no cloud computing, there wasn’t even the iPhone, and it’s easy to forget just how far “we” have come in the
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