The Opman Company specializes in inter-operations management. We design and help to implement management protocols, workflow systems and strategic methods for turning boundaries into interfaces, with efficiency, resilience and transparency.

We have a solid track record as a ready helper/coach/enabler to a wide diversity of innovators at various levels. We help results-driven managers meet their objectives and deadlines cost-effectively through structured interaction with multiple external parties. Managers call Opman when they conclude for themselves that their organization cannot accomplish its particular objectives other than through multi-party co-operation. If that sounds like your story, please ping us.

The Opman VECTOR Methodology (Visualize-Enable-Coordinate-Transfer-Optimize-Replicate) is, to any plurality of clients, what the well-known Design-Build-Operate-Transfer methodology is to singular clients. It structures “over the fence” conversations, respecting boundaries by treating them as interfaces. This enables diverse parties to work effectively together, while at the same time keeping to within their own mandates and jurisdictions. The Opman VECTOR methodology builds respect for each party's autonomy and distinctiveness, without obsequiousness or lobbying. Read more.

Current Projects: Turning Boundaries into Interfaces¶

Our pragmatic no-nonsense approach saves enormous time and money, and the resulting structures are designed to be resilient over time. Current Opman Company projects include:

Mobility Ottawa-Outaouais: Systems & Enterprises Inc.¶

• Mobility Ottawa-Outaouais: Systems & Enterprises Inc. is a federally incorporated for-profit regional company whose purpose it is to organize the "Moose Consortium" to bring about and operate regional public transportation services on 400 km of existing railway infrastructure throughout Canada’s National Capital Region. The company has created a highly innovative and flexible business model for private-public sector collaboration in core transit development and operations. Moose Inc. currently has five directors, amongst whom The Opman Company fulfills the President and General Manager role. Moose Inc. began signing Round 1 external investors in 2011. www.letsgomoose.com Moose Inc. is currently seeking Round 1 private sector financing towards work of the consortium, and working to ensure to usability of all the essential tracks and bridges. More info: http://www.letsgomoose.com

Intellectual Resources Management¶

• On behalf of a Fortune 500 client, The Opman Company is developing and delivering a Course on Business Risk-Minimization and Value-Maximization with Free/Libre/Open Works. The purpose of this course is to assist participants who are already active in free/libre/open supplier and user communities to refine their approach to licensing, contracting and operations management in order to more effectively:
— Minimize business risk by ensuring that the participating developers understand what is legally in and out of bounds;
— Maximize business value by ensuring that the participating developers understand diverse licensing and contracting options.
Under agreement with our client, this material is dual-licensed by The Opman Company under the GNU-FDL and CC-BY-SA licenses. View the syllabus.

• The Intellectual Resources Canada (IRCan) Initiative is a management structure and set of online services available to any community engaged in the joint creation and evolution of re-usable digital data, information or knowledge assets, which Canadian Government personnel consider to be helpful towards achieving their public interest mandate. The IRCan Initiative is the basis for robust and cost effective management approaches and deployment options for projects led by several departments and agencies. IRCan has completed its transition to a self-sustaining operational state co-managed amongst multiple projects and programs of the Government of Canada in alignment with Section 29.2(1) of the Financial Administration Act, and is deployed on Shared Services Canada data centres and networks. The Opman Company fulfills the Coordinator role on behalf of the Multi-Project Steering Committee, which is presently comprised of leaders from six major federal horizontal initiatives, including: the Centre for Security Science, led by Defense R&D Canada; the Office of Small and Medium Enterprise, Aquisitions Branch, PWGSC; Search & Rescue Canada; Meteorological Services, Environment Canada; Government Operations Centre, Public Safety Canada; and Natural Heath Products Division, Health Canada. More info: www.ircan-rican.gc.ca.

The Sport & Ecology Park of Canada's Capital¶

• On behalf of the Canadian Wildlife Federation and Paddle Canada, the Sport & Ecology Park of Canada's Capital concept is proposed jointly to the National Capital Commission and the cities of Ottawa and Gatineau, to leverage the potential of three out-of-service logging chutes on the Ottawa River and a semi-natural channel for redevelopment as world-class sports and recreation facilities that will bring whitewater canoe and kayak sports, and related activities and events to the core area. The concept includes ecological restoration and new urban development as well as sports, recreation and tourism programming. Since mid-2011 the project has been at the stage of discussion with the key parties towards pre-feasibility studies and an inter-jurisdictional governance structure. The Opman Company serves as Coordinator of this project on behalf of the Canadian Wildlife Federation and Paddle Canada, interacting with public, private and community organizations.

The Earth Reserve System¶

• ERA-ART: The Earth Reserve Archetype (ERA) Developers Group / Le Groupe de développeurs de l'Archétype d'une réserve de la Terre (ART) is a free/libre/open project to create a global geo-referenced index-generation platform based upon authoritative and verifiable data on resource availability and ecosystem integrity. (Read the Earth Reserve Index Concept of Opertations ) This service will provide a basis for anyone to produce geographically defined trends that are grounded in these underlying determinants of economic well-being. The ERA-ART Developers Group has started work on four different, loosely-coupled sub-projects: Data Model; System Software; Online Services (subscription-based); and Analytics. The main proof-of-concept Analytics sub-project involves associating the index-generation platform to global data on the currency of invoicing, to generate a set of currency exchange rates. It is expected that these exchange rates can provide a more reliable basis for medium-to-long term international project planning and contracting than the world's incumbent currency exchange rates system, which has become detached from the tangible economy by algorithmic speculative trading based on statistical noise. The Opman Company also assists with peer-review and experimental development of other monetary system options (eg. a currency unit based on total market capitalization; and a currency unit based on a broadly-based physical commodity reserve system.

OPA (Online Proposal Appraisal)¶

• OPA (Online Proposal Appraisal) is a full-featured multilingual distributed decision management system to improve workflow rigor for any process requiring documented review, decision and follow-up. In 1999 The Opman Company's founder led the original OPA design and development team at the International Development Research Centre (IDRC) and made the business case for sharing it under free/libre/open source licensing. OPA was advanced to version 2 in 2001 with the participation of the World Bank, for use by its "Global Development Network", the world's largest international competition for research funding on global, national, and regional development, http://opa.gdnet.org/ GDNet still uses OPA 12 years later. Other private and public sector entities have adapted OPA for diverse purposes such as personnel screening, insurance claims and in the planning of product development. The Opman Company is currently in discussions with various parties towards the financing of work towards OPA Version 3.

Our Role¶

Opman professionals are comfortable serving as "behind the scenes” enablers who provide creative and rigorous support at all levels, or as operational leads during proof-of-concept projects.

What We Stand For¶

We believe that socio-economic well-being depends upon the long-term availability of resources, the maintenance of the integrity of ecosystems, and the comprehensiveness of a diverse social and cultural fabric. We value the qualities of transparency, integrity, ethics, diplomacy, pluralism, enthusiasm, creativity, perseverence, resilience and efficiency. Our track record speaks for itself.