AdvanTEC TALK Summer Issue 2023 Newsletter
ADVANTEC Celebrates 25 Years of Service
By Leo Lee, Founder and Chairman
ADVANTEC's overarching mission to improve the quality of travel in Southern California began in March of 1998 with our name: ADVANTEC, which stands for our focus to innovate “Advancements in Technology” to meet the needs of our clients and the public they serve. Over the past 25 years, we have been privileged to serve nearly 200 clients, offering solutions to improve not only transportation infrastructures, but also the quality and safety of travel for the people who use them. Every day, the ADVANTEC team works hard to achieve its mission, "to innovate multi-modal solutions for safe, efficient and sustainable transportation infrastructures”. We feel blessed with the opportunities to work with so many elite members of the profession along this journey!
25 years have gone by quickly, with a lot of accomplishments achieved in collaboration with our clients and partners. Within a year of ADVANTEC’s founding, the firm participated in the development of the first arterial and freeway integrated traffic management system; the FAST project in Las Vegas in 1999. A couple years later, in 2001, ADVANTEC provided the City of Downey with a gigabit ethernet communications over fiber-optics for the Firestone ITS design project, the very first ethernet applications in traffic signal communications in an outdoor environment in LA County. One year later, in 2002, the firm implemented smart bus technologies in over 800 METRO buses with on-board navigation and computer systems. By 2003, ADVANTEC had become the LA County’s traffic engineering consultant, when we designed infrastructure upgrades at over 140 intersections and in the next 18 years, continued to make improvements to over 500 intersections in Los Angeles.
The next ten years found ADVANTEC performing one of the first multi-jurisdictional traffic light synchronization projects for OCTA, and completing the largest single regional traffic signal synchronization project in Southern California for SANBAG (Now SBCTA) as well as joining the team to design the major subway in Los Angeles – the Purple Line project.
By 2010, ADVANTEC had started to work with Caltrans on on-call contracts, and began working on major highway interchange projects. The current Irvine Office was opened in 2012. In that time frame, ADVANTEC designed the Wilshire Blvd Bus Rapid Transit project, and the team was honored with an award by ASCE. In 2015, ADVANTEC hired Carlos Ortiz to be the Chief Operating Officer, now serving as CEO, and he has been instrumental in promoting our business in ITS through many major projects, including the award-winning CV Sync project which is revolutionizing traffic operations in the Coachella Valley.
As we celebrate this important milestone we want to thank all of our clients and teaming partners who have contributed to our success, and we look forward to the next 25 years, knowing that technology is advancing at light speed, it creates more opportunities and challenges for our team, working together to bring the best solutions to a world in need of more safe, efficient and sustainable transportation infrastructures for our communities.