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Vince Pearce
By Priscilla Richardson
Leave it to a former hot rodder to care about highways.
Vince Pearce has gone from squealing tires to designing smart highway
systems, and from corporate consultant to federal employee focusing on
the security of our roads. While in the process of spreading his intelligent
transportation system (ITS) message in a seminar, the engineer for the
Federal Highway Administration stopped to talk to Progressive Engineer.
This mechanical engineer from North Carolina State University with a taste for "loud exhaust and burning tires" started by designing truck brakes, missile testing equipment, and computer systems. Early in his career, he took two years off to get an MBA from Harvard. OK, brakes, missiles, and computers might go together in a stretch, but where do highways fit in? In 1990, Pearce started an ITS business within Allied Signal, now Honeywell, and one job involved working in San Antonio for the Texas Department of Transportation (DOT). "Texas DOT had plans for an ITS control center but didn't have anything designed or built yet. So we designed it in detail, developed software, and bought and installed all the equipment. And we made it work," as he recalls.
After TI, Pearce moved on to consulting giant Booz, Allen & Hamilton.
A major project that epitomizes his work perhaps more than any had him
working with the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute to develop a preliminary
operations strategy for the I-81 corridor. "We analyzed traffic composition
and demands along the corridor. ITS means using electronics to monitor
the flow of traffic and tell travelers about problems," he explains.
For I-81, transportation departments had planned an ongoing 20-year construction
project full of work zones that can clog traffic. And the road carries
a heavy proportion of truck traffic, meaning they can't simply divert
all those trucks onto side roads. "They wanted plans for how you
can use sensors for surveillance to keep up the flow of traffic. These
devices would detect places where there is a crash and get resources there
quickly, and then share that information with travelers. The idea is to
conduct construction in the most intelligent way possible, to take advantage
of construction to put in electronics for long-term use."
With this background, Peace leaped at the opportunity to take the position
of Traffic Management Team Leader at the U.S. Department of Transportation
(USDOT) in Washington, D.C. in 1999. "I had the itch to do something
in the policy-making process. This job seemed like an opportunity to contribute
something," he says.
That assessment has played out more than Pearce could've imagined now that America has engaged in the war on terrorism. He leads the Operation Security task force group in analyzing emergency planning by region. "We're working on help for a city attacked. The highway community was interested in freight safety, security, and efficiency before 9/11 but with nowhere near the focus on security we have now. With security, you go into a heavy-duty learning mode, take on new assignments and new material, and have a tremendous impact."
The job involves giving a series of ten security workshops around the country based on a case study of transportation in New York City and Washington, D.C. on September 11, 2001. They also used experience from Hurricane Floyd in Pearce's home state of North Carolina. The broad audience for the workshops includes federal, state, and local agencies; public safety groups such as police, fire, EMS, and emergency management; and all modes of transportation, including airports. They go through a two-day exercise based on a realistic disaster scenario. As Pearce relates, "Quite often, the transportation community hasn't worked with other agencies. This lets people understand how information would move as threats were identified, how the FBI would control a crime scene, and what EMS could do. We get very positive feedback from all participants, who now understand why things happen."
Perhaps not as glamorous, but of practical everyday use to engineers is Pearce's "Roadway Operations Self-Assessment." He states, "You cover a lot of territory and get a sense of where you're strong maybe in coordinating traffic signals but not in trimming trees from traffic signs. Our second objective is to help traffic engineers, for example, who want something to take to county or city government. This tool can be used periodically to pinpoint specifics, and you can compare between years."
Pearce works to help every highway user in the country with his "Travel Time Reliability" study. As he explains, "If you want to manage your highways based on performance, you need to focus on a few measures of how a road performs, such as how much delay each driver experiences, how much travel goes below the posted limit." As for the reasoning behind such a study, Pearce says, "Look at the way the economy works. With just-in-time inventory management, for instance, you have to get it there in time. Even with day care, you can't be five minutes late to pick up the kids. So time reliability can also be a big personal deal. We worked on how to measure all this and share it with the public."
The key to Pearce's success in crossing disparate realms? "I wholly endorse business school. For me, it was a fantastic move." He has managed to combine a background as a hot rodding teenager and an engineer with stints in the consulting business, Harvard Business School, and the federal government, all in the name of creating safer and more efficient highways.
Priscilla Richardson is a professional speaker and seminar leader helping engineers write and speak for success. For the secrets of communication success, visit www.WriteSpeakforSuccess.com.
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