The Gwinnett County Board of Commissioners on Tuesday awarded Temple Inc. the contract to upgrade all the flashing school beacons across Gwinnett County for less than $700,000.
School beacons are used to control traffic in school zones for the safety of drivers and students. As such, these devices are part of the Gwinnett Department of Transportation traffic network. This contract will update 270 controller units in 150 school zones.
The existing flashing beacons were installed in 1999. While using a pager for notification was creative thinking prior to Y2K, now the software is dated and incompatible with current operating systems.
The contract awarded Tuesday will operate on a cloud-based software solution that provides two-way communications between the CountyÂ’s Traffic Control Center and the time clocks in the field through cellular service. The award covers the purchase of all products and services related to the school flasher control system replacement solution, including installation, communications, ongoing support and training services.
The vendor/manufacturer will host and maintain the server for the control software. The software will be accessed via an Internet browser and will eliminate the need for a server to be installed and maintained by the County Information Technology Team. The manufacturer is Applied Information (ai), a local company in Suwanee.
The $699,397.50 contract calls for installation of the new software, server space and five years of cellular service. Any malfunctions in the software are covered for five years as well.
Additional information about these and other SPLOST road improvement projects can be found on the CountyÂ’s website at www.gwinnettcounty.com.
