The Ohio Parking Association

Presents The Annual Conference and Tradeshow

December 10-11, 2020

Sheraton Columbus Hotel * Columbus, OH

The Ohio Parking Association will once again bring you an outstanding Conference and Tradeshow this December! Join your fellow OPA colleagues for two-days of networking, educational forums, discussions, a parking exhibition and a little social fun mixed in. 

Conference Schedule

Thursday, December 10, 2020

1:00 PM – 6:00 PM       Registration Open

1:00 PM – 4:00 PM       Exhibitor Set-up

1:30 PM – 2:30 PM       Modernizing a Parking System - The Short North Parking Plan

Speaker: Robert Ferrin, Assistant Director for Parking Services, City of Columbus Department of Public Service

Brief Overview:  To effectively manage supply and demand for residential and retail parking in a burgeoning area near downtown, Columbus Parking Services and its partners, Conduent Transportation, Parkmobile, and Genetec, deployed an innovative, customer-centric Virtual Permit Program as part of the City’s Short North Parking Plan. The Virtual Permit Program leverages integrated technologies and best practices to improve customer service and convenience; minimize the need for additional meters; enable LPR-based enforcement; and facilitate more data-driven decision-making. Parking Services’ plan includes an elegant solution to guest/visitor permit challenges that have perplexed cities for years. The Short North Parking Plan's best practices and innovation include establishing mobile-pay only zones in the permit district, introducing customer facing online tools, addressing guest and visitor parking challenges, enforcing by license plate, and providing data-driven decision-making opportunities. Learn about the policies, programs, and technologies needed to not only change the parking landscape initially in Short North but how the plan serves as a benchmark for future planning efforts Citywide.

2:30 PM - 3:30 PM Winning People for Parking: A Fresh Approach to Enforcement

Brief Overview: This presentation is geared toward those who speak on behalf of parking or who often have to answer the question, “Why do you write so many tickets?” That group includes enforcement personnel, office personnel, and management. What parking professionals need are memorable keys to create a short message that can be conveyed in 30 seconds or less to win support for parking; a message that will win people to the parking side.

Speaker: Vanessa R. Cummings, CAPP, M. Div., Owner and Chief Consultant, Ms. V. Consulting, LLC

3:30 PM - 4:30 PM        Digitize your Operations: How Technology Makes it Easy to Manage 30K+ Parking Spaces

Brief Overview:  When your campus parking system consists of 36,600 parking spaces for 94,000 students, faculty and staff, your technology needs to be equally impressive to keep up. Ohio State University has embraced digital solutions to help improve parking on their campus. Together with Passport, Bob Murray, CTO of CampusParc can share the importance of digitizing your operations and the benefits of going digital – from cost savings, to an improved customer experience, to better efficiency.

Speakers: Bob Murray, Chief Technology Officer, Parc of Ohio State and Crystal Allen, Campus Account Executive, Passport

4:30 PM - 6:30 PM         Exhibitor Reception in Exhibit Hall

7:00 PM - 9:30 PM       A Night of Holiday Fun at Shadowbox Live!

Friday, December 11, 2020

8:00 AM – 9:00 AM         Breakfast and Networking with Exhibitors

9:00 AM – 10:00 AM      Healthcare Reform: How it is Driving Service Improvements in Parking & Transportation

Brief Overview: Healthcare reform in the United States has motivated hospital leaders to take an intricate look at all aspects of the patient experience with in the hospital. As Hospital leaders continue to look for ways to be more efficient, productive, and fiscally responsible, they are also looking for ways to enhance the overall patient experience both inside the hospital walls and all of the important touch points as patients and visitors come to and from the hospital. So how has this shift focusing on positive experience affected the parking industry? It is challenging leaders within the parking industry to look very differently and how we prioritize service within our partnerships to hospitals. We must look for ways to be more cost-efficient and more productive with resources. But it's not just about cutting cost, hospitals are looking to the leaders in our industry to find ways to really enhance the overall patient and visitor experience with in the hospital. As hospitals increase their focus on HCAHPS results, they are continuing to explore what types of operations or contracted services within their hospital can impact the patient experience. All personal interactions, either hospital employees or contracted employees, Can impact the patient in either a positive or negative way. Hospitals are challenging their contracted partners to really understand the needs of the patient and work to create a very calm and comfortable environment in their parking services. Self-park facilities must be aesthetically pleasing, easily accessible, and efficiently managed. Special attention needs to be paid to ADA requirements and specialty reserved areas such as labor/delivery or radiation patients. For valet operations, specific attention must be paid to creating a comfortable and efficient operation. While the parking industry often focuses on revenue maximization in other sectors, our leaders must start to think differently for hospitals. If healthcare reform is changing how hospitals are reimbursed from CMS, then we must understand that a positive patient experience may be a bigger overall revenue source for the hospital.

Speaker: Stephanie Barnes, LAZ Parking

 10:00 AM - 11:00 AM  What Drivers Want: Parking without Apps

Brief Overview: Paid parking doesn’t always require expensive machines or attendants. The most common solution is already in our pockets -- tablets, phones, and watches. As appealing as it is for drivers to pay electronically instead of via parking meter, many drivers want to avoid downloading another phone app. Besides adding to their digital clutter, apps are impractical on-the-go, since download speeds on public networks can slow to a crawl when there are lots of devices in use within the area.

Speakers: Marc Ebtinger, Co-Founder and Executive Strategist, Flexepark and Michael Dowden, Co-Founder and Product Architect, Flexepark

 11:00 AM – 12:00 PM     Exhibitor Networking Break

12:00 PM – 1:30 PM        Lunch with the Exhibitors

1:30 PM - 1:45 PM            Ohio Legislative Update

1:45 PM – 2:30 PM          How Bad is it and What's it Going to Cost? 

Brief Overview:  Parking operators, facility owners, and asset managers should always be on the lookout for potential maintenance issues in the structures they manage. This session will provide opportunities to see real problems in actual parking structures with the opportunity and challenge of identifying the problems in an interactive session. Working with a former parking operator who has firsthand experience managing parking structures in various stages of decay, be it cracks, leaks, spalling, or something worse, a structural restoration engineer will share insight and knowledge on identifying and understanding these issues. This session will help you look for clues and impress others with your ability to identify and name common structural issues and gain insight on how to better maintain and prevent the issues in the first place. The interactive portion of the presentation will consist of competition to correctly identify an issue shown on the screen, list typical causes, determine the costs to repair, and provide solutions. Prizes will be awarded to winners!

Speakers: Kyle Pawlak, PE, Restoration Consultant, Walker Consultants and Jon Martens, AICP, CAPP, CarPark Management Systems, Walker Consultants

2:30 PM – 3:30 PM       Where Do I Park My Horse?

Brief Overview: Do you know who invented the first meter? The first city to enforce parking? Where the first automated garage was? No? Neither do most parking professionals. Join us for an interactive discussion on how our industry came to be, add your own knowledge, and let’s discuss where our important industry is headed.

 Speakers: Todd Fisher, JD, CEO, iParq and Nate Ferraco, Sales Rep, iParq

 3:30 PM Conference Close

Register Now!