PROBLEM
We were studying the SAFETY Act as part of our expansion of security and risk management offerings in our Protective Design and Security practice. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has a very informative website but the information on SAFETY Act approved technologies and their certification level (Designation, Designation and Certification, or Developmental Testing and Evaluation Designation) is not easy to sort and study.
SOLUTION
I developed a VBA-powered Excel spreadsheet that automatically:
- opens the DHS SAFETY Act Approved technologies list
- captures the relevant content
- post-processes the content to create some sensible sortable columns
IMPACT
This tool saved the high-wage staff who drive business development at Thornton Tomasetti lots of time. They were able to quickly capture and sort this key information to inform partnership decisions and competitive analysis. The demo video below shows data on 1020 approved technologies being captured in less than a minute!
