The professional training and perspectives of its staff and students and the independence and stature of UC Davis provide outstanding competence in the area of needs assessment. It is able to develop technologies and vehicles not feasible for Caltrans, partly because of its access to talent and partly because of an organizational structure historically and specifically designed for technology research and development. Lessons Over the past ten years, we have learned the following. A university environment is a strong draw for good people. It turns out that our combination of interesting problems in a research and teaching environment has attracted people with rare combinations of common sense, practical skills, abstract reasoning abilities, engineering training, and computer literacy.
Projects succeed to the extent that authority matches responsibility.
We need to do better needs analysis and outreach. We need to get out more. We have only just begun to learn about how to deploy what we have and who to ask for advice on what we should do next. From the beginning, our daily work has been supervised by monitors assigned by the New Technology and Research Program, for which we are grateful. Still, we could do more, especially in terms of spending time in the field directly observing daily operations.