This report formulates a new methodology for the incremental transformation of informal operations concepts for a waterway management system into system-level designs, the latter being formal enough to support automated validation of anticipated component- and system-level behaviors. Scenario specifications and models of behavior are formally modeled as labeled transition systems (LTSs). Each object is the management system is assumed to have behavior that can be defined by a finite state machine; thus, the waterway management system architecture is modeled as a network of communicating finite state machines. Architecture-level behaviors are validated using the Labeled Transition System Analyzer (LTSA). We exercise the methodology by working step by step through the synthesis and validation of a high-level behavior model for a ship passing through a waterway network.