The Selection Process

When municipalities face the demands of projects that are typically out of their scope of work, they turn to outside consultants to help them reach their objectives. These goals can span the range from enormously challenging, such as coping with natural disasters, to assistance in day-to-day administration, writing new ordinances, analyzing trash routes, and everything in between.

Long gone are the days when organizations selected outside business partners on the whim of management, or to fulfill the insistent wish of relatives to find a family ne’er do well gainful occupation. For decades, both vendors (the consultants) and their clients (the municipalities) typically enter the waters of their relationship through formal protocols of Request For Information (RFI) and Request for Proposals (RFP) that are essentially the roadmap “to explore how they can work together to create something that doesn’t yet exist.”

In the era of increasing transparency, relationships between municipalities and outside partners have been streamlined toward fairness, ability, capacity, and, of course, budget. But while electronic communications and online documents are designed to foster these benefits and improve processes, the common denominators of a good client-consultant relationship repeatedly echoed by all still emphasize the personal touch: good communication, willingness to dialogue and be flexible, and listening, listening, listening—on both sides of the table.

Getting What You Want And Didn’t Know You Needed
“We are very transparent,” says Tony Miano, deputy Public Works director of Field Operations for the City of Tempe, AZ.

“We go out and do an RFP Master Plan Process and follow the rules through purchasing, and we make sure we follow our guidelines so we’re not hiring our relations or a company that can’t meet the scoping guidelines.

“Plus, we ensure we are consistent with all the competitors and once we go through the interview process and we select the ­candidates, our committee chairperson who is the contact liaison makes sure that literally what we want is what they are going to provide for us.”

Miano says that prior to hiring a consultant, there is a process of first preparing the case of need, budgeting for the consultant, and then taking that to City Council for adoption.

“We look at what our revenue requirements are, we have different customers with recycling, waste diversion, organics, and different functions with the solid waste team. We develop a pricing matrix and then the Council approves the dollars for what we want and need to do. Our diversion goal is to be at 40% by 2020, so we have a lot of programs to strive toward getting us there.

He adds that they go put out an RFP that describes the scope of work. “And we describe what we are trying to achieve and then when responses come in, our team of all our different disciplines reviews these and each one grades it with a score. Then, based on the score, we work together and negotiate a contract.”

The role of consultants, Miano says, is to supply the staff time and expertise “that you may not have internally.” And it lends objectivity and a set of skills “to help you get ordinances passed, for example, and to comply with the legal requirements of grants when we receive project funding.”

In one example, Miano cites how they used consultants “to help me redistrict the garbage collection. We found we were overloaded with work and vehicles in one area, and we had to streamline this by spreading out the operation and looking at improving efficiencies at the transfer stations and throughput in our fleet shops.”

Consultants also helped with the master planning of asset maintenance program to replace sewers.

“Tempe is a suburb of Phoenix but we are much older than most suburbs in the surrounding valley; we have some infrastructure from the 60s and 70s still out there. So, being landlocked, it’s a problem to have streets torn up during an extensive sewer/water replacement project. We had a consultant work with us to look at all our treatment plants, all of our schedules, and how many miles of sewers/water lines that need replacing, and the service to create a master plan.

“We do the same thing with rate increases by having consultants help us analyze our billing process, our costs over a ten-year period to plan for increases so that customers aren’t suddenly surprised by a new, huge utility bill. They can dig into your numbers and help provide that mastery to help you talk about your systems, your efficiencies, and how to best plan for the future.”

He adds it is also nice “to see how you compare to other cities that the consultant works with, just to see if you meet or exceed industry standards.”

The best consultants, he says, are the ones who have the capacity to get the job done and who bring information to the table that you may not have considered, and who have the patience to work with a diverse group with many expectations and views.

“If you are running your business correctly, you are asking them to find the little holes, not the big gaping ones. I use them to fine-tune my operation and provide skill sets and expertise to do what we aren’t able to do here. If they are finding big holes in your business model, you have other issues.”

But the success of the partnership isn’t the sole onus of the ­consultant. “You only get out of it as much as you put into it,” explains Miano.

“You need a good administrator on the client side who will hold them accountable for deliverables, and it is essential you write a good scope of information so that everyone knows what the objectives are. And you need to spend time with the applicant during the interview process to see if it’s going to be a good working relationship. In that personal encounter, you can learn if they supply the expertise, whether you feel they have the capacity to do what you need or to hire subcontractors with specific skills, and also to keep within the timeframe to meet milestone dates. Listening, on both sides, is essential.”

And Brett Wolfe, the waste sector director of HDR Inc., echoes the collaboration in vision as essential for the consultant/client partnership.

Bridging Vision to Action
“HDR is a full-service firm providing engineering, architecture, environmental, and construction services for the built environment and we have a broad range of public and private clients we work with.

“I think that what works from a consultant perspective like ours is that we have a trusted advisor relationship. They know we are looking out for their interests and we sit at the same table to discuss challenges to their waste systems.”

Wolfe describes their role as one of serving as a partner “to get from point A to point B. And, if they view us as more than an engineer providing those design services, we are well poised to do much more.

“For example, we can help them manage risk as they are working with subcontractors who are building landfills for solid waste, and make sure they meet regulatory compliance issues.”

He says it’s not unusual for clients to feel like they are on shaky ground. “They don’t often know exactly what they want which is part of our responsibility—to communicate the vision, and then, get them to partner with us to explore how to move forward to where they want to be.”

“We encourage cross communications to explore the possibilities. These can be brainstorming workshops, or a design charrette to see what ideas emerge. Of course, this isn’t always applicable as some clients do know exactly what they want, but it is our job to maximize the potential of opportunities and help them realize the full benefit of the projects.”

The company also does remediation for hazardous waste, and it has the expertise for Superfund cleanup sites and also in developing sustainability for environmental protection.

“We look at our client fees as not just our payment for service, but their investment in the work that ultimately compares very favorably with what we will be saving them. And this is a factor many clients don’t often consider, ‘if we do A project now, we will be saving B dollars later as a result.’“

He adds that they assist with engineering permitting and help clients in costing out the job, plus they have a large effort towards supporting greenhouse gas reduction, performing carbon footprint studies so that projects will have a lower carbon footprint, and “are very engaged in maximizing the use and repurposing of waste streams.

“Taking the waste and showing clients how to use advances in traditional recycling for biogas, or electricity, or some other use, helps them create a revenue stream they may not have considered.”

The company has more Envision-certified staff than any other consulting firm doing this type of work. Wolfe explains this certification is the “equivalent to a LEED certification for the non- vertical environment work on sustainability.”

Envision was developed by the not-for-profit Institute for Sustainable Infrastructure, who says it is their “mission is to help communities build more sustainable infrastructure projects. Our nonprofit organization was created for a single purpose: to develop and maintain a sustainability rating system for all civil infrastructure.

“Provided at no cost to practitioners, Envision is a plain-language guide that combines a best practices library, field-proven checklists for infrastructure projects of every size and type, and a comprehensive sustainability rating system that helps infrastructure owners gain recognition for their well-planned and executed projects.”

The organization says there is no cost to help people plan their projects, but there are costs involved if you pursue third-party verification.

Wolfe adds that everyone today is “looking at their waste composition; there is a lot of planning toward some form of energy conversion. We’ve invested in the expertise to provide planning activity toward that end for our clients, and we can offer capabilities to help them look at how to divert waste, and still keep revenues. We’re looking at pricing structures that are basically reinventing the waste programs, and also asking clients the question, ‘Where do you want to be 20 years from now?’ This is crucial to defining strategies for environmental policy planning, and finding sustainable means to ensure municipalities have a consistent and favorable revenue stream.”

With HDR services in several countries, Wolfe sees the changes in waste management with a global perspective. “The future of waste today is very different than that of the past and we’re here to help achieve those goals.”

A Six-Story Football Field
Hurricane Katrina of 2005 is forever in the minds of everyone who lived through it. For the rest of us, it was a catastrophe of epic proportions that unfolded across every media channel in an hour-by-hour drama. While New Orleans was often the focal point of headlines and images, it was in fact, nearby Biloxi, MS, that incurred unprecedented levels of structural damage.

Public relations specialist Cecilia Dobbs Walton from the City of Biloxi recalls today, 11 years later, how the “flood waters came in and then drained out of New Orleans, and of course, it was terrible in human tragedy, but here it was a somewhat different story.

“We had an ongoing high tide at landfall, and the storm surge that developed from the wind driving the water inland took out entire streets. It picked up buildings that then floated downstream acting as huge missiles that took out other buildings. What we lost in structure—those historic buildings can never be replaced. The roads, beaches, and other buildings can and are being rebuilt, but the others are just lost to history,” affirms Walton.

Few municipalities will ever face a crisis of this magnitude, which only underscores the valuable role consultants made in helping Biloxi with its massive cleanup that has been quantified as a “football field six stories high of collected storm debris.”

As the weather experts mounted increasingly severe warnings of the impending storm severity, employees with the City of Biloxi Engineering were working with administrators throughout the city and state to line up assistance to help them when it was over. Contracts and funds had been arranged and consultants were in place, ready to perform the cleanup of what proved to be an unimaginable amount of debris.

Tonya Hebert, the FEMA Coordinator in the City of Biloxi Mayor’s office, says, “The City of Biloxi puts out an RFP [Request for Proposal] for emergency debris pickup, which also includes services for debris monitoring; the main debris efforts were completed by August 2006.”

Hebert explains that monitoring means keeping track of what you are picking up, where it came from, how much of it there is, and then where is it going for disposal.

“You need to have these statistics and information in order to be reimbursed by FEMA for these services,” explains Hebert. The total cost, which covered activity over nine separate categories, was just shy of $62 million to move out and dispose of the six-story football field of post-storm debris.

This figure did not include two projects that Hebert says “were initially Category A Debris Removal FEMA Projects, but were then re-allocated as a general project because of the time frame, and done later.”

Also, Hebert says the two cement piers that had been destroyed had to be demolished by the City, who then took the cement debris and sent it out to a “Katrina Reef.”

Biloxi City engineer Christy LeBatard says that the waste management is handled by a county-wide government agency called the Harrison County Utility Authority (HCUA) and not by the municipalities.

“So it is this group that is responsible for collecting and disposing of solid waste in the county, which includes the City of Biloxi.”

LeBatard describes how the HCUA guides the plans for using consultants to help tackle issues such as ongoing infrastructure needs, as well as future concerns like climate change and sea level rise.

“The City has a master plan currently being designed by a consultant in order to help prioritize future public works projects in areas currently without sewer and drainage. In other areas, the City sees a need with a water/sewer/drainage issue and then brings a consultant on board to design a project to fill that need.”

She says that through the RFP/RFQ process, consultants are contracted using either a lump sum contract or an hourly not-to-exceed contract, “but there are times when consultants are contracted with directly, instead of going through those formal processes. But this is usually based on our experience with them with a specific project, such as designing phase II.”

LeBatard adds that state law does not allow engineer selection to be based on costs and that they must be retained based on qualifications, with costs negotiated after selections.

“The City doesn’t consult with any solid waste type consultants or contractors as that is handled by HCUA, but we do hire engineers and architects.”

Nonetheless, sometimes the best-laid plans have to be modified. Hebert says that one of their pre-event contractors they had on hold for Katrina cleanup was unable to handle the enormity of the subsequent hurricane debris, and while they did help out in the initial 72-hour push, “such as clearing roads for emergency vehicles, we then got submittals from various engineering firms for the debris monitoring and to help us put together the information we would need in order to obtain contractors to clear the debris.

“In the end, we used five or six different contractors for the job. In the case of doing work for FEMA reimbursement, we have to go with the lowest cost in order to comply with their regulations and get paid.“

But the FEMA reimbursements were a bit of a snarl of red tape when it came to historic properties, recalls Biloxi’s director of community development, Jerry Creel.

“We got the City Council to vote to declare a state of emergency that allowed us to put our measures in place before the storm, as we knew there was going to be a lot of debris needing to be removed and properly disposed of.”

When you have a declaration of emergency, the City “can execute contracts with engineering firms that will assist us,” says Creel, but “One of the things that surprised me—and keep in mind there are several branches of this agency—FEMA first told us if you want to get reimbursed, you have to hurry up and get this debris out of there so you can be eligible for the funds.

“But then, the historic branch of FEMA stepped in and said, hold on, before you move anything, you have to submit
a form for anything 50 years or older. Any ­demolition or removal or alternations need to be approved by the historic branch of the agency.

“We were trying to get the streets opened and this was a snag in the process as Katrina took out the whole lower end of the city, the section that is on the peninsula on the east end of Biloxi.”

It all worked out, Creel says, but it was something of a nail-biter as they were told to hurry up, but then to stop and do more forms, and then wait for those approvals.

“We had to make sure we didn’t do anything that would upset the process with FEMA, but this is bit of red tape that they could probably modify, given the circumstances and crucial timing to restore some level of public safety for police, fire, and other first responders in this type of disaster.”

When the City puts out an engineering RFP, Creel says the engineering staff at the City then decides who most closely meets the specification, citing several criteria. “For one thing, we look at the number of years the staff who is actually going to be doing the work has been with the company. Then we look at their capacity. In the case of Katrina, we had to make sure they had the capacity and resources to cover a project this large.

“But I’ll tell you, it’s a close call on several occasions; sometimes, it just comes down to the judgment of the City engineer, who ultimately knows who is going to do the best job for us.”

A Primer of Client Guidelines
At Cornerstone Environmental Group, LLC, a Tetra Tech Company, business development director Mark Swyka says that “Roughly half of our work is in support of projects for municipal agencies.”

He adds that within the arena of environmental services that the company offers, “a large percentage of our professionals specialize in the area of solid waste, recyclable materials, and organics management.”

Swyka offers a range of important criteria that clients should consider when looking for partners to fulfill their municipal project needs.

“First, are you comfortable with the consultant’s representative? Does that individual or project team have a proven track record for addressing projects that are similar to yours?

“Then, does the consultant clearly demonstrate that they have your best interests at heart? Do they look you in the eye? Take time to evaluate your needs? Will they tell you the truth even if they know you probably won’t like it?”

Finally, Swyka says that when consultants are upfront, they admit that the work is outside of their scope of expertise, and offer to recommend someone better suited to the job, it is a good hallmark of credibility.

Another suggestion he advances is to ask the consultant to cite other projects similar to the one under consideration and describe how administrative, technical, and regulatory hurdles were managed.

Choosing the right engineering partner for your project “should never be based upon an estimated fee,” Swyka cautions, adding that “All too often, the pressures to reduce the amount of a fee estimate results in the avoidance or elimination of the time necessary to fully consider each of the important aspects of a project.

The possibility that “too many good consultants can be compromised in this way” results in the project reducing the scope of service or eliminating time that otherwise would be a crucial factor to the best outcomes.

“I learned very early in my career that the short way is the long way—essentially meaning that when shortcuts are taken that are not fully thought-out, they can easily compound into problems that result in project delay and additional cost,” says Swyka.

On the municipal agency side, he emphasizes the responsibility on their end to communicate and to hold regular dialogue as essential.

“As a consultant, we need to know what the a