for a contract in the parsons brinckerhoffinc. in an amount not to exceed $250,000, for system engineering services for the treasure island mobility management program and for authorizing the executive director to negotiate contract payment terms and non-material contract terms and conditions. this is an action item. >> welcome, good to see you. >> good morning, ladies and gentlemen and commissioners of the finance committee and chair cohen, i am the principle engineer of the transportation authority and i am here to request your support for item number 6 and as you are aware on april 1, 2014, the transportation authority was designated the treasure island mowbility management agency, to implement the transportation program to support the upcoming development project on the yerba buena and treasure island including 8,000 homes and we have been closely coordinating the development of this plan with the treasure island development agency also known as fita, our work program which is focused on the development of policy recommendations in this fiscal year, and consist of developing a plan that outline

so, i'm going to date myself again and say that i was really -- i was a journeyman's system engineers when service oriented architecturing became very popular. and the principle behind so is really not all that different web-oriented projects or whatever they're calling it today and the idea is that i develop and deploy my systems as collections of reusable -- think legos. i can pull out the red brick with six length of six connection points and replace it with a blue brick and there's no problem. my lego construction doesn't care. they only care about what the infer faces look like. in terms of reliability and maintainability, one of the big cost drives right now for our legacy systems is the fact that they are these tightly coupled interconnected systems that means if i fix something here, i break something there. and the cost of that maintaining that goes up exponentially, to the point where the cost of maintenance is equivalent to or -- this is the old stuff, right? this is the cost of maintenance is equivalent to or exceeds the cost of new capability acquisition. i'll date myself again. so wh

engineered systems approach. you have proven there is a market for it. but then at the same time cloud, software as a serviceeople are able pay by the drink. so there is cost service, optimization, and performance. where do you expect most of the growth to come from? at the narrower margin end of the spectrum where you have infrastructure as a service where you are saying you are going to be price competitive? is it at the higher margin end in engineered systems where you are trying to get more revenue? >> that was one question. like 12 parts. good. first, i think the trend in engineered systems is similar to the trend in cloud, what is really motivating people to go this direction. and that is simplicity. the fact i can move budgetary dollars they spend gluing things together and doing this integration and moving it to somebody else. in this case to us. we glue the operating system to the server, the database to the operating system. perhaps middle ware to the database, even the application. and we do that work and the customer doesn't. it's similar to the same thing about cloud. the fact is i now get softw

system that we have and enjoy, is the most complex engineering feat ever, ever created by man. it is smart. now can it be smarter? probably. but the fact of the matter is it delivers reliable servicef the time. customers have learned to rely on it in a way that they can rely on practically no other utility service that is available across the board in this country. we have a very strong grid. can it be improved? of course it can. as customers uses change, the grid need to be modernized. it needs to be improved, able to address individual customers continuing need for electricity. >> well, mom-and-pop out in cleveland or certainly in massachusetts, vermont or out in california, they all want to know when they flip on the lights, no matter what the weather, it is a luxury, we're all spoiled in this nation because we do have electricity 99% of the time. >> sure. liz: but what do you think happens next in this nation when it comes to upgrading the grid and when it comes, your stock is publicly-traded. fe is the ticker symbol. you're in it for a business. can you make a buck here and how tough is that becoming? >> it is becoming increasingly more difficult, particularly in competitive

engineering. and our department of defense is better at that, our armed services is better at that than any organization on earth. >> woodruff: the focus is on helping overwhelmed local health care systems across west africa. under the president's plan, u.s. forces will build 17 new treatment facilities in the region, each with 100 beds. the u.s. military is also: establishing an instruction facility to train up to 500 medical workers a week, deploying 65 officers to staff a hospital for treating health care workers and airlifting hundreds of thousands of home health kits to the affected nations. while the president laid out that plan, top federal health officials appeared at a senate hearing on the ebola threat. >> there is a window of opportunity to control the spread of this disease, but that window is closing. if we do not act now to stop ebola, we could be dealing with it for years to come, affecting larger areas of africa. ebola is currently an epidemic - the worst ebola outbreak in history. >> woodruff: in all, the virus has infected nearly 5,000 people across five countries and left more than half dead. in geneva today, the world health organization issued a stark new warning..