Washington State Department of Transportation

About Washington State Department of Transportation

Washington State Ferries (WSF), part of Washington State Department of Transportation is the largest ferry system in the United States and the largest ferry system in the world based on vehicles carried, transporting 23 million passengers and 11 million vehicles annually. The ferry system operates 22 vessels, providing 450 daily sailings on its ten routes. WSF operates and maintains 20 terminals offering service from Pt. Defiance, Tacoma in the south, to Sidney, British Columbia in the north.

Project Scope

The new system provides WSF an integrated solution that supports all union, legislative and safety requirements for dispatch operations in use today and provides a platform for enhanced capabilities to meet new requirements as they emerge or change going forward.

It assigns shifts and dispatches employees, while accounting for individual employee skills and training certifications, government regulations, employee preferences and union rules.

The solution will also be used in real time to enable WSF dispatchers to manage last-minute staffing changes due to staff leave on short notice, weather impacts to the workforce deployment and technical challenges requiring workforce reconfiguration. Employing advanced algorithms, the Quintiq solution will enable WSF to optimize its workforce utilization while improving work assignment accuracy and accountability as part of its streamlined processes.