Designing and implementing a system to catch Bermuda's offending motorists is all in a day's work for Michelle Walkes.

The 26-year-old, originally from Sandys Parish, but now living on the other end of the Island in St. David's, has been involved in the creation and installation of the Electronic Vehicle Registration system at the TCD for the past three years.

And just two weeks ago Ms Walkes, who works as an information systems consultant at GMD Consulting, saw it claim its first ever victim after a driver was sent to court for racking up $16,000 in unpaid tickets.

So far a total of 1,508 offences have been recorded, with the offence of having an unregistered vehicle incurring a $750 fine, while being without insurance carries a charge of $1,000.

Ms Walkes, who went to school at the Berkeley Institute, studied computer science and business administration at St. Mary's University in Halifax, Nova Scotia and originally had designs on becoming a systems analyst.

But having graduated in 2005, she decided to come back to Bermuda and took on the role of IT project consultant, with the TCD as her first client.

The new electronic system, which works by Radio Frequency ID (RFID), verifies whether or not a car has been licensed or insured at the time it was being driven on the Island's roads. It went live at a number of sites across Bermuda on July 1 and has proved to be a big hit for both raking in additional revenue to Government's coffers and bringing offenders to book at the same time.

"Right now we have four fixed-road sites and when a car passes by it has a tag inside which is read and verified as to whether it is licensed or insured and if it is not a picture gets taken and the person receives a summons," Ms Walkes explained.

"My role has been getting requirements for what is needed and picking out locations for the fixed road sites."

Ms Walkes, who was working out of a trailer based at the TCD during her time on the project before recently relocating to brand new offices complete with a staff base of eight in Schroders House, Front Street, admitted that one of her biggest challenges was getting local and civil engineers together to set the sites up, but now that has been completed, she is moving onto the second phase of the project which covers motorcycle registration.

However the project management courses Ms Walkes undertook at university have stood her in good stead for the task and the new one that lies ahead.

"This was particularly exciting because it is the first in the world that has been done and it is a great experience learning about all the technology and just all the aspects of Bermuda and how engineering works as well as generally all the thing's I would not be exposed to normally, and of course how you can use RFID and apply it to a number of scenarios," she said. Indeed the new system has a number of applications for everything from checking for licences and insurance to monitoring movements in and out of places such as quarries, including which trucks came and went and how much limestone they loaded up.

Having used Bermuda as a guinea pig, it is hoped the new system will be rolled out in other islands throughout the world in the future, according to Ms Walkes.

"Other islands have been asking about it," she said.

"I know one of them is Barbados, which is looking at it and watching our return on investment."

Other projects which have been occupying Ms Walkes' time included a new drivers' vehicles registration system and various web design work for the Bermuda Housing Corporation, Bermuda Healthcare Services and Onion TV.

She also has plans to go back to university to get a masters degree to follow up her bachelors one, while working on the RFID system has allowed her to gain her qualification for project certification.

Aside from her day job, she serves on the E-commerce Advisory Board and is chairman of the Ewan Sampson Scholarship Trust, where she was a former scholar herself and which offers scholarships to budding young IT enthusiasts and promotes the industry in Bermuda, as well as doing boxing in her spare time.

Having mastered the Island's electronic vehicle registration system, it seems like the world is her oyster, and it will not be long before she is making a name for herself working on even more exciting and challenging projects.