Strategic Priorities – E-Ticketing

May 29, 2023

In the 2020 – 2025 AASHTOWare Strategic Plan, the Special Committee on AASHTOWare (SCOA) outlined strategic goals and initiatives to establish AASHTOWare as the premier source for innovative transportation technology solutions. The following strategic objectives will be addressed in the 5.00 release to leverage e-ticketing data within AASHTOWare Project™:

1. Design and maintain a framework to leverage third-party partnerships (alliances) and product integrations
2. Enhance core product development to remain relevant while supporting advancements in technology and changing business processes
3. Explore partnerships (alliances) with transportation technology vendors as an alternative to traditional development

The Project Task Force (PTF)’s e-Ticketing strategy is essential to streamlining inspections by simplifying the handling and integration of material data into AASHTOWare Project™ for acceptance, payment, and source documentation. In the first phase of e-Ticketing interfacing, the PTF is focusing on creating a high-level overview of the materials received for a contract.

Overview of Research & E-Ticketing Interfaces

The PTF sponsored research on e-Ticketing gaps and determined that it is essential to provide a means for AASHTOWare Project™ to interface with e-Ticketing providers so that the data from e-tickets can be used to enhance and complete other tasks that are already being completed in the software. Within the user research interviews, there were many lessons learned:

• Tracking materials is a key feature of e-ticketing
• Project item ticket statistics are very important
• Adoption of a common data specification is crucial for data consistency

AASHTOWare Project™ 5.00 enhancements

In AASHTOWare Project™ 5.00, set to be released this fall, AASHTOWare Project will begin utilizing the AASHTOWare OpenAPI framework tool. A new page will be added to AASHTOWare Project™, allowing the interface for Contract Items e-ticketing to receive e-ticketing information from any e-ticketing software. The support fields within the system will conform to AASHTO’s Material Delivery Management Systems specification. This page will become the hub for e-ticketing features going forward, beginning with quantity tracking for ticketed contract materials in this fall’s release.

In future releases, we hope to further link e-ticketing information to Daily Work Report item postings, material sufficiency evaluation, and AASHTOWare Project Civil Rights & Labor™ functionality.

AASHTOWare Project initiatives and strategic goals for e-ticketing this year are focused on creating a framework to leverage third-party integrations, enhancing product development to remain relevant while supporting technological advancements, and exploring alliances with transportation technology vendors. By working with e-ticketing providers, alliances are being built to leverage their e-ticketing process to integrate with AASHTOWare Project™ and meet these objectives. With the AASHTOWare Project™ 5.0 release, the first integration with e-ticketing systems will be available for tracking and managing Contract Items.