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City of Sunny Isles Beach | RFQ No. 20-07-01 | Continuing Professional Consulting Services (CCNA) <br />On Schedule and Within Budget <br />We have enlisted the most appropriate leader, Jenna Martinetti, <br />PE, and the best available team members to ensure that the <br />most economical and technically sound projects are delivered <br />to the City on time and within budget. We accomplish this by <br />keeping the channels of communication open among CGA’s <br />team members and supplementing with regular in-house team <br />and client progress meetings. Additionally, monthly status <br />reports are submitted to the City’s PM. This helps ensure <br />that project milestones are being met as planned as well as <br />keeping the City ready to answer any commission, resident <br />or business owner questions. Frequent communication <br />among the City and the projects manger also allows CGA to <br />closely monitor project progress, budgets and schedules. We <br />use progressive communications tools to keep in contact as <br />various team members undertake different tasks each day. <br />The full suite of project administration software (Ajera) is <br />used by CGA’s staff. Whether it is time and budget tracking, <br />or monitoring schedules and task completion, this system <br />measures real time task completion and budget status. The <br />use of conference calls and web-based meeting rooms allow <br />for frequent and efficient meetings with the City, internal staff, <br />and sub-consultants. <br />At CGA, a key exercise for maintaining schedule is performed <br />in the kick-off meeting by identifying key risk factors. This <br />involves the complete team and includes each discipline and <br />responsible team member. We focus on task critical functions <br />based on each discipline’s knowledge area. The complete <br />involvement emphasizes schedule awareness and complete <br />team buy-in. For example, if a potential slip in the schedule <br />is identified, the Project Manager can address it through <br />the project’s issues and risk analysis process. Schedule <br />changes often have downstream impacts and permitting is <br />always a critical element. Therefore, CGA project managers <br />are trained to use the schedule as a functional tool and focus <br />on critical task that impact the final completion timeline. <br />With the schedule distributed to the team, the project <br />manager closely tracks individual task and updates project <br />progress. If circumstances occur that have the potential to <br />cause delays, the project manager is authorized to assign <br />more resources to the project. If delays are permitting or <br />administrative in nature, the project manager will revise the <br />schedule considering the potential risk of continuing forward <br />with a design without final project approval. Such a situation <br />will be presented to the City to determine if the delayed tasks <br />can proceed based on the anticipated outcome of the third <br />party approvals processes. The CGA Team understands that <br />a schedule is intended not only for the consultant, but also for <br />the City to coordinate their resources for reviewing submittals <br />and for reporting to other City staff and Departments. <br />The CGA PM and team is equipped to handle projects <br />varying in nature and timeline. The CGA team structure <br />and experience allow for simultaneous execution of multiple <br />projects or project tasks as well as fast-tracking or expediting <br />projects. CGA cross-trains our project managers and task <br />leaders to gain critical experience in multiple areas of civil <br />engineering. By doing this, we enable multiple project teams <br />to work concurrently on the same project. This allows for <br />undertaking separate tasks for one project on parallel tracks <br />or multiple projects at the same time. Additionally, the CGA <br />CADD team and junior engineering staff are well-rounded <br />and work for project managers across the civil engineering <br />disciplines, ranging from water and wastewater to roadway <br />and parks design. While the organizational chart shows <br />certain employees under specific categories, plans production <br />and project management functions are similar across the <br />disciplines; so our engineering staff is able to work across <br />disciplines, as needed to expedite the completion of projects <br />or tasks. Project timelines depend on the complexity of the <br />project, the permitting requirements, and external factors <br />such as grant deadlines and agency review times. Pulling <br />more resources, performing tasks simultaneously, permitting <br />awareness and superb subconsultant coordination are <br />mechanisms for reducing the overall schedule for a project, <br />if needed. <br />The approach to controlling project budgets, another <br />important management technique, is to identify if the budget <br />is sufficient for the scope of work being requested at the <br />beginning of a project and track the budget throughout the <br />lift of the project. CGA will work with the City to understand <br />the basis of the budget number to help ensure that additional <br />scope is not added without consideration on how this affects <br />the budget. With each design milestone, cost estimates will <br />be prepared for comparison to the budget. The unit prices in <br />the cost estimates are constantly being updated with the best <br />available information at that time and are subject to change <br />even when additional scope is not added due to variation in <br />the construction industry. If a project is in jeopardy of being <br />over budget, immediate attention is provided to address why <br />and determine what steps need to be taken. <br />25