Mobile applications: Tunnel maintenance management

I'm Guillaume PAUGET, a 45-year-old engineer from the TPE (French public works department), and I'm in charge of information systems at the DIRCE (Direction Inter-Départementale des Routes Centre Est).

I manage a team of 6 people, part of whose missions are dedicated to GIS, the development of specific tools or the integration of software packages. On a personal level, I manage two TMA contracts, and provide IT support to the DIRCE's business departments.

The areas of intervention are varied, from cross-functional tools (HR, Budget, Finance) to “core business” road tools (dynamic equipment, pavement structures, road GIS, CMMS, engineering structures, etc.).

Yes, 4 years ago, the DIRCE wanted a tool to monitor the maintenance of tunnel equipment. It's a fairly sensitive subject, as the safety of tunnel users is a complex one, which also required nomadic technologies (so that operators could feed the IS from the field).

A project team (a CP, 4 reference users and myself) was set up internally to frame the project, and a call for tender was issued to recruit an enterprise capable of supporting us in the process.

In 2021, Sully Group was chosen to lead the project, from upstream tasks (functional workshops, UX/UI design) to technical developments (Flutter nomad app, PHP transactional backoffice) and deployment of the solution on the platforms.

SULLY Group mobilized a Project Director, a Functional and Technical Project Manager, a UX/UI Designer for the mock-up phases, Developers and DevOps Engineers. Project committee meetings were held once a month, and two steering committees were organized for the arbitration phases (GO/NOGO for the initial launch and production launch).

To date, the project is being deployed on the first user perimeter identified. It will then be extended to other territories. In my opinion, this success is due to several factors:

• The availability and overall vision of the Sully Group project manager, who was able to understand the business issues and translate them into the right functional and technical specifications. His continuous presence over the duration of the contract is to be commended as a guarantee of stability.
• The choice of a purchase order contract, which enabled us to match administrative progress to technical progress.
• The availability and commitment of the business teams (particularly with regard to the extensive work to be carried out on the reference data needed to feed the tool).

I hope that all our teams will be proud enough to have taken part in a process which, indirectly, is aimed at user safety and the public good. Sully Group and the DIRCE have worked together to ensure the smooth progress of this project. We have demonstrated, I believe, through mutual respect and a desire to be constructive, that it is possible to work seriously without taking ourselves too seriously!