Public Transport Authority: Customer Information System Replacement

Full-Cycle Ownership

Very few senior design candidates can demonstrate origination and delivery on the same engagement. I led the winning bid, preparing the tender response, estimations and pitch deck, then delivered the work. The result is a named, won, delivered example of end-to-end ownership from presales through to sign-off.

Discovery

Co-facilitated with Insight’s Lead UX Designer and Practice Lead. The discovery phase spanned 13 stakeholder groups comprising 26 individual stakeholders, across 7 departments and 16 operational teams. We ran 5 design thinking workshops with 53 attendees and produced 4 personas and a service blueprint.

The stakeholder landscape was complex, from TTO Service Planning and Rollingstock through to CSAC Accessibility and Inclusion and N&I Communications Engineering. Each group had different priorities, constraints, and definitions of what “good” looked like for passenger information. A major ask from the PTA contact was to improve relationships and understanding between these groups. The workshops were structured to do exactly that: getting the critical teams together, helping them understand and appreciate each other’s constraints and experience, and building alignment that had not existed before.

Every stakeholder group was passionate, engaged and actively contributing. That level of participation directly led to the quality of the framework, and the success of this engagement led to PTA awarding a second piece of work (bus disruptions).

The Framework

As sole remaining Insight consultant, I authored and delivered the CIS Performance Framework and Functional Specification. The framework is a governance instrument now approved into PTA’s assessment process for both greenfield and brownfield station projects. It comprises:

• 10 scored performance criteria with measurement formulas, thresholds and defined remediation actions
• 14 journey decision points across 6 journey types
• 8 customer zones mapped to required information assets
• A 3-tier STIM concept with a full features matrix
• A network rollout model plotting infrastructure complexity against patronage
• 5 interactive STIM prototype flows

The framework was built through close collaboration with the key stakeholder, who brought deep domain knowledge. I picked up that domain quickly and applied systems thinking to structure it into something actionable. The result was a governance instrument neither of us could have produced alone.

Why This Matters

The bid-win to discovery to sole-delivery arc is unusual in consulting. The framework being approved into PTA’s assessment process means it will actively shape station design decisions across Western Australia’s public transport network. Not a report that sits on a shelf.

“Throughout the engagement, the consultants demonstrated strong analytical and facilitation skills. Their work was instrumental in aligning stakeholder perspectives and defining a coherent direction for the future management of customer information systems within the Public Transport Authority… Heather played a pivotal role in the success of the Functional Specification finalisation — ensuring that deliverables were not only completed to a high standard but also met the expectations of a wide range of stakeholders.” Guillaume Massardier, Delivery Manager, Network & Infrastructure, Public Transport Authority

Hard Skills

Figma, Design Thinking, service blueprinting, persona development, interactive prototyping, performance framework design, business case authoring, stakeholder facilitation, tender preparation and estimation

Soft Skills

Full-cycle ownership (bid → discovery → delivery), presales and tender writing, workshop facilitation (5 workshops, 53 attendees), sole consultant delivery, stakeholder synthesis across 13 groups, impartial requirements gathering, governance instrument design

Note: Source deliverables are PTA client-confidential. The contribution, method and reasoning described here are my own to share; client documents and screenshots are not.