Public Works Office (PwO) is a technology consulting and product development firm dedicated to making technology for the public: technology that is understandable, interoperable and responsive to users, often deployed in public environments.

PwO is led by its founder and principal consultant Jeff Maki.

Past clients have included mass transit operators, architecture and engineering firms, public space concessionaires (e.g. out-of-home advertising), higher education/research, technology firms, real estate and private equity.

Wondering if PwO can help? Say hello at hello@publicworksoffice.com

Selected Past Work

• 

  A machine-learning powered system to match buses observed on the streets of New York City to the bus schedule, enabling realtime arrival predictions to be shared with customers. With OpenPlans and Cambridge Systematics.

• 

  Pilot kiosk-based program to connect veterans with transportation and economic opportunity in York, PA. Part of USDOT's Veterans Transportation and Community Living Initiative (VTCLI). With Cambridge Systematics.

• 

  Web-based decision support and incident response system for emergency responders in Western Pennsylvania (FEMA Region 13). Acquired by Nusura.

• 

  Actionable roadmap to leverage digital advertising screens to improve customer communications at LA Metro while growing and retaining ridership, and generating new revenue. With Intersection.

• 

  Sketch technology vision for a next generation city built "from the Internet up". Presented to the Alphabet board and submitted, in part, as Sidewalk Labs' vision for Sidewalk Toronto. With Intersection.

• 

  Deployment of OpenTripPlanner for Sound Transit, including a customized web front-end built on the OpenGeo stack and a productionalized data pipeline.

• 

  Pre-acquisition advisory work on scaling, reliability and transition of New York City's bikeshare. Acquired by Lyft. With Control Group.

• 

  A 15-week investigation into "Who Decides Where The Subway Goes?" with New York City high-school students. With The Center for Urban Pedagogy and Alexandra Woolsey-Puffer.

• 

  A custom route planner designed to route users through as many "sidewalk sheds" as possible to avoid sun, rain or other adverse environmental conditions. Presented as part of PwO's talk titled "Against Efficiency" at Conflux 2012.

• 

  A Flickr-like website to share gigapixel+ images, taken by a unique camera rig (shown above). Includes software to take, stitch and upload images to the web. (Photo by Alan Levine)

• 

  A robotic visualization of the aural landscape of Pittsburgh, collected via MapHub and displayed in Karlsruhe Germany. Exhibited at ZKM's exhibit "Making Things Public" (2005).

• 

  A wiki-like, community-editable geographic information system (GIS) to foster grassroots neighborhood data sharing to encourage more equitable, inclusive development. IP acquired by RouteMatch (Uber) and the WPP Group.