I hope each of you had a Merry Christmas and a great start to the New Year. It is important that we all spend time with family and friends over Christmas and take a well-deserved break before we embark on new adventures in 2018.
I have had the pleasure of working collaboratively with many of our members in my role as the Sr. Project Manager and Associate Vice President at HNTB Corporation, and with many more on OmniAir® committees. I am honored and humbled to have been elected Chair of OmniAir by you, my peers.
For the last three decades, I have been working on systems and software implementation with half of that time focused on connected vehicles. As the new Chair for OmniAir, I look forward to working with as many of you as possible. My goal is to continue working with the board and consortium members to establish OmniAir as the one-stop shop for members to collaborate on national certification and interoperability requirements. I want to increase member value by increasing participation in existing and new committees.
Through my involvement with OmniAir over the years, I have observed OmniAir grow into a viable interoperability and certification consortium in both connected vehicles and tolling. I believe interoperability and certification are necessary to see a successful national deployment.
As with any market, there will be many connected vehicle device providers. Interoperability is essential; as these safety-critical devices must communicate seamlessly with each other. However, to see large-scale national deployment, it is vital that OmniAir and its members promote third-party certification. Third-party certification is the mechanism that will deliver a higher-level confidence end-users desire. State departments of transportation have noted that they will be reluctant to spend millions on connected vehicle infrastructure projects if they are unsure the technology will indeed be interoperable.
I want work to create a balance between our tolling and connected vehicle efforts to create a long term stability for the organization and then look for opportunities to expand our certification and interoperability base. The transportation industry undergoing transformation like we have never seen before. I want see OmniAir become THE 3rd party certification entity for emerging technologies that will shape the future transportation.
With your help and guidance, I am confident that OmniAir can take certification and interoperability to the next level!
Sincerely,
Steve Novosad
Chair – OmniAir Consortium
Sr. Project Manager and Associate Vice President – HNTB Corporation