Systems Engineering Role: A project development process that leads one from concept development to production to operation.

One of the most confusing elements of the Federal Rule and compliance is the need for Systems Engineering in the development of ITS projects, especially for agencies here in the Houston region. Local agencies have a long history of deploying ITS systems without much “overhead” investment in planning or developing requirements documents. Much of the deployment has been done previous to the development of national ITS standards and continued deployments follow existing protocol.

This has been good from the perspective that a great majority of ITS funds have been allocated towards equipment and integration efforts resulting in widespread deployment of useful systems. However, it has been a detriment when trying to technically document what has been done, when trying to convey to others how to interface with existing systems, or when posed with opportunities to take advantage of the cost reduction that ITS standards may provide.

This TSMO Clearinghouse Program provides the first concrete guidance on the use of systems engineering analyses that are now required to be performed during federally funded ITS projects. This guidance is based on a newly developed risk based systems engineering process in 2017, training conducted in August 2008 at HGAC (Systems Engineering for Intelligent Transportation Systems) as well as the Systems Engineering Guidebook for ITS, published by the California Department of Transportation and FHWA California Division(3).