Whitney Nottage, Q-Free’s executive vice president, traffic management, knew she wanted to be an engineer when she was in high school. “I just really knew I loved math and solving problems, so I decided to go for engineering,” she says. “At the time, I wanted to be an environmental engineer because I knew I was going to save the world!”
That desire did not last long at the University of Central Florida in Orlando. “I quickly learned that most environmental engineers end up in wastewater treatment and dealing with pooh - for lack of a better word - for a living, which wasn’t my ideal career choice,” she smiles.
Nottage switched to civil engineering, and gravitated towards transportation, discovering the ITS world while interning at PBS&J (now AtkinsRéalis). On its 18-month transportation graduate training programme, she was meant to spend three months working on ITS - but ended up doing 12 months: “They had so much work, and I liked it so much!”
Problem-solving skills
She enjoyed the variety, and how it was possible to be working simultaneously on various projects. “I enjoyed how you could do such affordable things and cause such large impacts,” she laughs. “And it also made me feel like I was having a really big impact, but working with some really cool things, so I just stuck with it.”
The cliché about engineers is that they like precision and order. “It's very true,” she smiles. “My friends joke that I'll make a spreadsheet about everything; I like things in their place and organised.”
An engineering qualification offers a grounding in mathematical know-how, but also teaches other important things with wider business relevance. “I'm not doing calculus anymore, but the skills that you learn from calculus and solving problems and taking on those challenges are definitely carried through,” she says. “Once you reach a position of leadership in a company, regardless of the industry that it's in, you're going to get hit left-field with all kinds of things that are not in your wheelhouse. But if you can think about it logically and with an analytical mind, then the problem-solving skills that you started with, that core from university, can always help.”
One thing that’s changed in her time in the ITS sector is the mix of people. “The ITS industry, 15 years ago, was 100% civil engineers, and it made sense at the time, because we were primarily just throwing technology onto a road, and roads are what civil engineers did,” she suggests.
Different expertise
“And now we look at the ITS industry, and it is a healthy mix of civil, electrical, computer science, networking, and I think that's absolutely necessary because we need skills from so many different facets of expertise. A lot of these new roles in our industry - software developers, data analysts - they're very challenging to attract to our field. And given that we're usually not quite as competitive as, say, an Amazon or Google, it's hard to find good talent, but when you do, it's usually people that are really passionate about it, and they bring a lot to the table.”
Much of this diversity has to do with the way the priorities of ITS have altered. Rather than simply expediting the movement of motor vehicles through cities or along freeways, other things – such as safety and the environment - have come to the fore.
“My friends joke that I'll make a spreadsheet about everything; I like things in their place and organised”
“We have three pillars in our vision: Q-flow, Q-safe, Q-clean,” Nottage explains. “It's about the efficiency of the road, the safety of the road, and the environmental impact of our road users. When I started, all we really were focused on, was moving cars as quickly as possible and [our clients] having the least amount of citizens calling and complaining. And now it's very much focused on the emissions caused by congestion, and safety. We still have a long way to go, though, because in the US we had over 40,000 fatalities on our roads this past year.”
While this makes the US an outlier among developed nations, Nottage points to some reasons. “The US is quite a bit different than most countries: we have much longer, high-speed roads. Going state-to-state in the US is like going from country-to-country in Europe. And so we struggle a lot with distraction, tired drivers, not enough information for our road users. And that's where I think technology can have a very large impact, because technology can help resolve or mitigate some of those challenges.”
No single solution
The roll-out of Vehicle to Everything tech is a positive move but, as a professional engineer, Nottage is clear-eyed about its limitations. “I think it will inevitably reduce fatalities,” she says simply. “But I also think it's not the only answer. No one solution can solve the problems that we have on our road today, and it takes interoperability and collaboration for us to really get to where we want to go. Honestly, there's changes in the technology, more connectivity, more information for our drivers. But I also think there's a change in philosophy that our industry needs to take on.”
Rather than simply implementing a solution, agencies need to focus on how the solution relates to a specific issue. “We need to shift our philosophy, I think, to implement projects that are solving problems,” she insists. “So instead of saying, ‘I need to get my bus schedule more reliable’, it needs to be: ‘My road is unsafe, and I need to get my bus schedule more reliable’. [This] is going to be important to make sure that the people working on these designs have that at the forefront of every decision they make.”
Nottage does see this being gradually ingrained in the industry: “I definitely think we're getting there.” At a recent conference she was in the audience for the keynote speaker, ITS America president and CEO Laura Chace. “She talked a lot about the funding programmes that they're working on putting together, but she also talked about safety. And one of the things that she said at the very end - she had a picture of her beautiful family - and she said: ‘I'm tired of saying “call me when you get there”. It's something that I wish I didn't have to say to my kids every time I knew they were getting in their car’. And so she's making sure that that we are all thinking of it. And I think everyone is starting to have that at the forefront of their decision-making.”
Other changes are required in the ITS sector. “To me, the biggest challenge is representation of women in our industry,” Nottage says. “Since I was in college, the growth of women in STEM has only been 7%. So improvement is great, but that's slower than I would like to see in 20 years. And so I think it's important for everyone in our industry - not just women - to be advocates for ITS, so that we can attract more people - again, not just women; all kinds of people - into our industry.”
Engineering is cool!
She regularly visits schools and universities to talk about engineering and ITS. “Most people, especially in high school, don't even really think of transportation as an industry - let alone ITS,” she explains. “So ITS is mostly unheard of; it's always very new to people. But I think more than just ITS, it is just getting people into engineering in general. And one of the things that I learned, spending a lot of time in high schools and even middle schools, is that engineering is almost always talked about [in terms of] ‘look at this really cool thing you can build!’”
“I think everyone is starting to have safety at the forefront of their decision-making”
That fun aspect certainly works in attracting people to the subject, she thinks. “But what's less often talked about is the impact that engineering can have on the world. And when you start talking about how what we do can save lives, can make people's daily lives better, you start to attract other people that may not have really cared so much about how cool it is. And so I think talking about engineering in different ways and the different ways that it can be exciting for people, helps attract more people in.”
That said, Nottage really does think that ITS tech is cool. “We do have so many innovative things out on the market today that are really neat to work with. And then also there's the softer side of it - there's 40,000 fatalities on our roads every year, and if you're in this industry, you have a real, tangible impact on that. And there's a lot of underserved communities that don't have access to transportation - or not enough access to transportation - and you can help them get that access. So it's every facet of what we do and how we can help. And so it's not a matter of ‘we should be talking about this, or we should be talking about that’. We should just be talking - and we're not doing enough of it. Everyone in our industry should be advocates for ITS and out there talking about what great things we can do.”
ITS Georgia and ITS Tennessee’s Chattanooga Smart Summit earlier this year was a case in point, she thinks: “They did a great job, because they decided to host it at the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga, and then they allowed students to come at no cost, and sit in.”
Fantastic programme
Her alma mater, the University of Central Florida, already brings in students from the STEM courses in local schools to do different experiments, with companies also coming in to assist and give them an idea of how they work. “That’s a fantastic programme, because it was kids that you knew were already interested in STEM, and it was an opportunity to get them into the university, working with college kids, and for the industry to come in as well and expose them to the things that we're doing in the real world,” Nottage says.
(© ITS International | Adam Hill)
ITS folk should look at whether such programmes exist in their area – and if not, reach out to universities and see if you can help start them yourself, she suggests: “Usually, universities with engineering programmes love to get involved in those things, especially when they have ASCE [American Society of Civil Engineers] clubs or ITE [Institute of Transportation Engineers] clubs within chapters in their university.”
Of course, it is also worth trying to stimulate young people’s interest before then: Nottage’s own daughter is in first grade. “I've started talking to the elementary school about their STEM days and their career days and how you get in there,” she says. “There's a statistic that says most girls are interested in STEM as a little kid - my daughter's favourite subject is science; she loves it. But towards the end of middle school is when they start to lose interest - so we have a small window between sixth and ninth grade to keep them interested and keep that going.”
So much for the future – the existing ITS sector can do more to help itself too, Nottage thinks, not least through more collaboration. At Q-Free, the tolling and traffic management sides of this international business are increasingly sharing best practice. “We're really starting to come together and talk about: what are our lessons learned? What are we doing great over here? What are they doing great over there? And how can we pull these things together? We've talked a little bit about collaboration, but it's important to emphasise that it needs to be global.”
That can open up opportunities and solutions that perhaps people were not previously aware of. “And so we're doing a lot now where our engineering teams in Norway and our engineering teams in the US are meeting regularly and talking about the things they're doing,” she concludes. “And our project teams are meeting regularly and talking about some of the things they're doing - so that we can try and take advantage of opportunities overseas and vice versa. But I think that should become an industry-wide thing.”
