History

Public Works Solutions (PWS) was founded in 2002 by Mel Paret - a municipal and public works management consultant who has made significant contributions to various national/state programs and regional and local public works projects over his 30 year career.   After 4 years as a contractor for USEPA programs, Mel became a management consultant with KPMG Peat Marwick conducting numerous projects and publishing articles of national and regional importance over a 20 year period.  As senior manager at KPMG Consulting, he served clients such as Tampa Bay Water Authority, Miami-Dade Water & Sewer and Solid Waste, New York City Water Dept., City of Indianapolis, U.S.Navy Norfolk Shipyard RDF Facility,  District of Columbia Public Works Dept., Massachusetts Water Resources Authority and Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewage District as well as many federal (USEPA) and state (MA, FL, IN, SC, MS, MD, RI, ME) agencies.  His experience includes planning, implementation and assessment of several large IT projects including PeopleSoft Utility Billing, NYC Water Billing as well as several environmental permitting/enforcement applications.

In 2002, Mel started Pubilc Works Solutions LLC to focus on public works and solid waste services.  In addition to consulting, PWS applies automation and technology to leverage organizational accountability, financial performance, customer services and operational improvements.  Mel received Master of Business Administration (MBA) and Master of Pubic Health (MPH) degrees from Tulane University and is a member of American Public Works Association (APWA) and Solid Waste Association of North America (SWANA).

Evolution of Trakster

Starting in the early 1980's at KPMG, Mel consulted for the City of Indianapolis Solid Waste Division in the initial planning and financing of its resource recovery facility and then evaluation of its collection/recycling operations for competitive contracting of City services.   Indianapolis's Mayor Steven Goldsmith received national attention in promoting competition with private contractors to improve efficiency and effectiveness of various City services.  KPMG conducted activity costing, financial analyses and performance measurement of the solid waste operations (and other services) and facilitated in the competition process.  A Paradox system (Route Efficiency Management System) was developed to track operational performance of the solid waste crews.  

In the 1990's, KPMG was asked to develop a similar work management package for Washington, D.C. Department of Public Works.   Mel and his team developed DPW Works, a client-server software (using SQL Server) to help DC manage its Solid Waste and Street Cleaning operations.  The system capabilities were expanded from just route operations (in Indianapolis) to include employee time/attendance, vehicle utilization and activity costing.   The DPW Works system was also installed for the City of Phoenix Solid Waste Division in 2004.    PWS then made the decision to develop, from the ground up, a new web-based software specifically for municipal field operations and customer services.   Trakster® is a very easy to use suite with three modules:  

  • ServTrak - customers, addresses/blocks/intersections, service requests, containers, billing
  • FieldTrak - field operations, route management, time/attendance, incident/accident tracking, performance measurement and activity costing
  • RightTrak - enforcement actions-NOVs/Warning tickets, recycling & other inspections and full integration with ServTrak customer services

In 2006, the District of Columbia Solid Waste Management Administration replaced DPW Works with Trakster's FieldTrak module for field operations/route management and the ServTrak module for improving customer services related to container services, missed collections and grafitti cleanup.