VicRoads – Connect Bids

VicRoads : Connect Bids Project

Brief description of work undertaken:

The Connect Bids system provides a single, integrated solution for the creation, management, review and approval of Bids across all sectors of VicRoads, and will replace more than ten separate Lotus Notes databases. This application will be a key tool in the preparation of VicRoads annual funding requirements.

Key business objectives of the application were to provide:

  • A single authoritative source of information for bid planning.
  • Tools that assist VicRoads staff to prepare reliable, accurate and fully considered planning bids.
  • Improve productivity through the alignment of information, people and business processes

Connect Bids has on screen forms to capture information about bids or programs and provides a map view of the Bids being developed. This Map view is provided by interfacing into a real time on line mapping system which allows the user to easily see where location based bid work has been planned to take place. In addition to replacing the Lotus Notes based tool, Connect Bids also introduced a raft of new features such as:

  • Pre-population of data fields.
  • Cloning of bids from previous years
  • Toolbar functionality
  • User customised Home page.
  • Advanced search and analysis features.

Complexity:

This project exhibited significant complexity because of the need for tight integration with legacy systems. The application architecture needed to take into account the need to be able to populate the legacy systems with captured, approved data while also needing to implement functionality not supported by the back end. Performance issues related to the use of web services to store data necessitated the creation and maintenance of a separate database schema and significant advanced caching strategies. The application architecture made effective and innovative use of client-side scripting and server-side web services to implement seamless integration with third party mapping and geo-location services.