D.C. Metro Crash Computer Failure Likely, Outsourcing Probed

"We cannot afford to lose any more of our own, or any more of our customers."

-D.C. Metro General Manager John Catoe

Fatal DC Metro Crash: Computer Failure Likely, Outsourcing Probed

WASHINGTON – Who's running the computers and providing the software engineering infrastructure solutions that operate the nation's mass rail trains?

LWOH has learned that one multinational corporation Bentley Systems, headquartered in Exton, PA with over 50 offices worldwide, lists on its website that it provides an impressive enterprise solution called the Optram Enterprise Suite for rail infrastructure management to the Washington Metro Area’s WMATA. (Full disclosure: no link to Bentley Systems and the incident is implied.) In addition to the D.C. Metro, Bentley Systems also lists that it provides the same comprehensive “corridor asset management solution of choice” for leading freight and transit providers, including:

• AMTRAK

• CSX

• Atlanta’s MARTA

• Network Rail

• San Francisco’s BART

This rediff.com report includes a 2003 press release announcing that Bentley Systems moved its “select testing and quality assurance operations” to India as a part of its development initiatives:

“The US-based $230 million Bentley Systems, a leading provider of infrastructure engineering software solutions, is moving its testing and quality assurance operations to India as a part of its development initiatives.

The company has already set up a centre for this purpose in Mumbai, and has employed around 15 engineers.

"Currently, the entire core software development work happens out of the US. We also have a development centre in Finland. We are now looking at how we can expand our operations in India," Sandeep Srivastava, managing director, Bentley Systems India Pvt Ltd, said.”

According to the press release, BS also has strategic relationships with multinational project engineering companies such as Forster Wheeler, Bechtel, Fluor Daniel and Montgomery Watson who successfully use Bentley technology to run single virtual teams across countries including India.

Computer failure may have caused Tuesday's fatal DC Metro train crash, according to a preliminary report by the NTSB as they search for clues to explain why the computerized system designed to prevents such disasters failed. Outsourcing/insourcing American jobs to cheap, dubiously “skilled” third world workers is not only hazardous to the financial health of American citizens and the economy but to the U.S. population's health and safety.

As LWOH has reported, the Obama administration's eyebrow raising appointment of Vivek Kundra for Chief Information Officer and Aneesh Chopra for Chief Technology Officer on the heels of a Federal bribery sting raised more questions into the wholesale selling out of American jobs including D.C. Virginia state jobs to inshored and offshored foreign nationals, all in the name of fun and profit for a few corporate and beltway insiders who game the U.S. Government's contract/bids system. Recall Kundra's ties to D.C.'s Optimal Solutions and Technologies (OST), an outsourcing company with transportation contract awards where Kundra once served as a board member. (h/t/ Rob Sanchez.)

IT outsourcing company, GRPA (G.R. Patel & Associates, Inc.) with offices in India lists among its customers the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA), the World Bank, among others. (Full disclosure: no link to GRPA and the incident implied.)

Today Federal Investigators plan to test the computerized controls for “Metro trains”, although the report did not clarify if they will limit the tests the D.C. Metro rail system or the entire nation's metro transit systems as well in search for answers to the cause/prevention of yesterday's deadly crash responsible for two area Metro transit trains colliding that killed at least nine people.

In particular, officials are focusing on why a computerized system failed to halt an oncoming train, despite evidence that the train operator tried to slow it down. In the meantime, this is hardly cold comfort for the families who lost their loved ones in this tragic, avoidable collision.

Will the people of this country finally unite together and rally to throw the bums out of political office who enable the wholesale sell out of our jobs for profit as they lust for cheap, foreign labor?

Perhaps D.C. Metro General Manager John Catoe summed it up best when he said:

"We cannot afford to lose any more of our own, or any more of our customers."

-2Truthy