Referenceable Work

QED National had the pleasure of supporting a variety of customers across both the public and private sectors. For these valued clients, QED National has provided IT Staff Augmentation, Cybersecurity, IT Management Consulting, and Professional Services, empowering its customers to most effectively achieve their all-important IT and business objectives. While QED National’s publicly available master IT Staff Augmentation contracts are listed on the Contract Vehicles page, the following project abstracts provide examples of recent QED National engagements delivered under the firm’s project-based methodology and approach.

Engagement:  Application Portfolio Management (APM)
Client Industry: Transportation/State and Local Government
Project Purpose, Services, and Outcome:

A large State & Local Government Transportation customer engaged QED National to migrate from a legacy Application Portfolio Management system to ServiceNow’s industry-leading Application Portfolio Management solution. The purpose of this initiative was to enable more efficient APM processes that integrate with enterprise IT management systems for Asset Management, Request Management, Project Management, Change Management and Problem Management.

As the prime contractor for this engagement, QED National was responsible for overall delivery and migration to the new APM system. The effort was managed using an Agile methodology. The project sprints addressed stories including Architecture, CMDB, Business Application Setup, Technology Map setup, PPM Impacts, Business Application Scoring, Financials and ITSM Integration, Data Conversion, Code Migration, and UAT Support. The project was delivered within the original budget to the customer’s complete satisfaction.

As a result of the migration to ServiceNow APM, the client is better able to manage the complete product lifecycle of its extensive portfolio of 1,500+ applications.

 

Engagement: School Situation Room Program Management
Client Industry: K-12 Education/Healthcare/State and Local Government
Project Purpose, Services, and Outcome:

One of the largest public K-12 Education school systems in the country engaged QED National to help lead a multi-agency effort to ensure the safe reopening and operation of schools during the COVID-19 pandemic. This engagement is ultimately aimed to assist principals and other public school staff that receives reports of COVID-19 test results, confirms those results, creates policies and gives guidance about whether a classroom, school, building, or more should close as a result of one or more COVID-19 cases in a school. As such, the specific roles played by QED National are of Project Oversight, Project Management, and Quality Assurance nature. An Engagement Manager, who oversees the entire QED National team and operation, is available for escalation purposes and ensures the overall delivery of the project. Four Admin/Operations Leads serve as Project Managers and leaders of overall team. Admin/Operations Leads interact with senior level staff from multiple agencies and groups (incl. Commr, DM, etc.); helps the multiagency Admin team determine if an intervention is needed and trigger Legal to inform school Principal/Admin of actions taken and their next steps. Lastly, QED National’s Quality Assurance Leads make determinations about school closures based on risk of exposure to COVID-19.

 

Engagement:   IT System Analysis; Independent Verification and Validation
Client Industry:  Health & Human Services/State and Local Government
Project Purpose, Services, and Outcome:

A large State & Local Government Health & Human Services agency contracted QED National to conduct a thorough review of a critical, but troubled, IT project. The purpose of the review was to provide an independent assessment of a third-party implementation of a system and recommend a best option to address the organization’s mission and the specific goals and objectives of the business.

QED National worked diligently and collaboratively with various IT and Business stakeholders in the performance of the review. This work included:

·         Conducting stakeholder interviews

·         Reviewing project artifacts, risks, issues, and overall success/failure factors

·         Conducting comparative analysis of strategic options (with accompanying rationale)

·         Formulating proposed recommendations

·         Reviewing proposed recommendations with key stakeholders

·         Preparing a report and presentation of findings and recommendations to executive management

The IV&V assessment was completed on-time, on-budget, and to the client’s complete satisfaction. This ultimately enabled the customer to make an informed decision on the strategic direction of a critical and costly project.

 

Engagement: Backup, Disaster Recovery, and eDiscovery Solution Design and Implementation
Client Industry:  Transportation/State and Local Government
Project Purpose, Services, and Outcome:

This State & Local Government Transportation customer required a backup, disaster recovery, and data management solution to capture, search, analyze and produce information from their email systems, unstructured data, and endpoint devices (desktops, laptops, etc.). The client needed assistance to quickly and reliably respond to legal, human resources, audit, compliance and forensics/security requests. For this engagement, QED National managed the design and implementation of Commvault’s data protection solution.

QED National’s Project Team organized this project into four separate Milestones to ensure proper scoping, design and implementation of respective modules. These Milestones included Scoping and Architecting, Data Protection Implementation, Data Archival Implementation, and Adjustments and Project Close-Outs. Each of these phases were closely coordinated with the client’s project team, and were ultimately completed on time, within budget and to client satisfaction.

The implementation of Commvault’s suite of Data Collection, Search/Analysis, and Disaster Recovery solution reduced acritical information searches dramatically to improve the client’s ability to comply with information requests more efficiently. The end result also enabled the customer to have interoperability with customer’s front end legal “custody of data” platform, which allowed their Legal team to produce faster and more cost-effective defensible searches. This also enabled proper protection of the client’s servers and databases, search and eDiscovery on all client files, and protection/adequate search capabilities for all client end points and mailboxes.

 

Engagement: COVID-Safe Agency Vaccination and Testing Program
Client Industry: Healthcare/State and Local Government
Project Purpose, Services, and Outcome:

A large State & Local Government agency was mandated to, within a very short timeframe, have its 6,000+ employees’ provide either a one-time verification of COVID-19 immunization, or weekly proof of a negative COVID-19 test. To manage this operation, this Healthcare customer’s Chief Operating Officer engaged QED National to provide Program Management, Oversight and Quality Assurance services. QED National’s approach for delivering such services included, but were not limited to:

Start-up and Planning
The Start-up and Planning phase addresses the following key activities / tasks:
•Develop High Level Project Charter
•Develop Detailed Project Schedule
•Develop Communications Plan (including Management Reporting)

Requirements Analysis and Process Definition
•Stakeholder Interviews/Workshops
•Review COVID-Safe Communications Requirements
•Design and Document COVID-Safe Vaccination Tracking Process
•Design and Document COVID-Safe Testing Tracking Process
•Review Tracking Reporting Capability (Address Gaps as Required)

Coordinate COVID-Safe Operations
•Oversight of COVID-Safe Operations
•Coordinate and Support COVID-Safe Vaccination Tracking
•Coordinate and Support COVID-Safe Testing Tracking
•Coordinate and Support COVID-Safe Communications

 

Engagement: Enterprise Architecture Assessment
Client Industry:  Transportation/State and Local Government
Project Purpose, Services, and Outcome:

A large State & Local Government Transportation agency required an independent and complete architecture review of its service delivery functions, business processes, information systems, and underlying technologies. The agency contracted QED National to provide an assessment which focused on improving of the organization’s ability to provide efficient, sustainable, cost effective and scalable service to their customers and bring their IT infrastructure into a sustainable state of good repair.

To this effort, QED National authored an architecture vision statement and supporting project plan. The work included IT and Business stakeholder interviews, definition of As-Is and Target business, information systems, data and technology architectures, Gap Analysis, and definition of recommendations for implementing those Target architectures.

QED National’s analysis, assessment and report provided the client with important information to make informed decisions on their infrastructure planning and software for their operations. This ultimately enabled the agency to improve their service delivery functions, business processes, information systems, data and technology solutions for business functions and supporting systems.

 

Engagement: ICS/SCADA Cybersecurity Policy Assessment
Client Industry: Confidential Government Client
Project Purpose, Services, and Outcome:

An owner of critical infrastructure who requested confidentiality contracted QED National to assess specific risks and controls impacting their ICS/SCADA environments supporting Control Centers. For this engagement, QED National provided detailed assessments, reports, and recommended remediation approaches.

As part of this engagement, QED National assessed numerous IT and OT Security Policies, Standards and Processes for conformance to NIST Framework for Improving Critical Infrastructure and supporting standards. The firm delivered a comprehensive report detailing strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities for improvement concerning enterprise-level Cyber Policies and related documents.

As a result of this assessment, the client was able to understand the relative strengths and weaknesses in key areas and form a plan to establish a firm foundation for securing ICS/SCADA environments which support some the nation’s most critical infrastructure.

 

Engagement:  Analysis for Residential Treatment Program (RTP)
Client Industry: Health & Human Services/State and Local Government
Project Purpose, Services, and Outcome:

A State & Local Government Health & Human Services customer requested QED National’s assistance by providing analysis and development for their Residential Treatment Program, as to ensure the alignment of development and implementation of system enhancements with their Program’s business objectives. Functional enhancements were necessary to support the recording attendance by finger imaging, rate changes, addition or removal of service providers, intra-agency reporting and process improvements increasing the accuracy of payments and reducing the operational costs for RTP billing. This was an important project which the customer relied on QED National to assist in completing.

For this engagement, QED National provided business analysis and process modeling to align the development and implementation of system enhancements for the client’s Residential Treatment Program (RTP). Along with the definition and analysis of functional requirements, QED National’s team supported the creation of process models through implementation of the system, management of the development effort, performance of QA/QC testing, and end user training.

As a result of this engagement, the client was able to deploy an efficient solution, properly train its staff on use of the new solution, and obtain more efficient overall business processes for their Residential Treatment Program.