Safety signal, 01/2012

              the Safety Signal
January 2012 - Page 1
New system for permits division
January 2012
(Continued)
If you would like to
make a submission or
suggest a story idea
to be published,
please send your
information to Public
Information Officer
Deanna Beckham
Hargus, editor, via e-mail
to
dhargus@dps.state.ok.us
or call 405-425-7708.
It has been almost seven years since the
Size and Weights division has updated their
system to issue
permits. In
computer years, that
might as well be a
century. But
Director Larry
Punneo has been
optimistic since
November 1, 2011
when their new
system went online.
With a total
of 32 employees,
Punneo reports that
with the new
system in place,
they issue approximately
900 permits a day.
“Prior to the new
system, we issued 950
each day,” said Punneo.
But with the new
system having been
online for only three
months, Punneo feels
they have made great
strides in keeping up
with demand and in time,
will exceed prior
numbers. The system
now allows a greater
majority of permits to be
issued from start to finish by automation.
“People were so frustrated for being put
on hold for so long that sometimes they would
bootleg the load instead,” said Punneo.
“The first day was chaos,” said
Administrative Officer Carolyn Owings,
assistant director, who has worked in the permit
office for 32 years. She said the first two weeks
they worked as much as 14 hours a day in an
effort to keep things
running smooth.
“Sometimes we
didn’t get out of here
until midnight. We
began to wonder what
we got ourselves into,”
joked Owings. “But
that’s with anything new
when you go live with it.
By December we started
to see some relief. There
are still some areas
needing improvement
but it is a much better
deal. The public is
starting to get used to it.”
She said the feature that
needs the most tweaking is
the routing portion.
“Our customers are asked
to put in the beginning and
ending locations, the two
destinations, and then tell it
to generate that
information,” said
Owings. “The system
takes into
consideration the
dimensions of the
vehicle, the weight of
the unit and the
Becky Mederos (top left) and Melanie
Bush feed restrictions mandated by
ODOT into the system. Pins on the
map indicate road construction
throughout the state.