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SCRWA – Analysis
Of Contract Operations
South County Regional Wastewater Authority
(SCRWA) operates and maintains its regional wastewater treatment facilities
in
Gilroy, CA under an agreement with a national contract operations
firm. SCRWA selected WBA to review the quality and cost-effectiveness
of its agreement with the contract operator. The agreement was
scheduled to expire shortly, and SCRWA wanted to determine if
they should renegotiate the agreement or conduct an RFP process
to solicit proposals from other contract operators. WBA conducted
a thorough audit of the SCRWA project, reviewed and recommended
changes to the O&M agreement, and benchmarked the project
with three other contract operations projects. The benchmarking
included review of the agreements and costs of the three other
projects. In addition, WBA arranged for site visits to the projects,
and included SCRWA staff and board members on the site review
team. WBA summarized the results of the analysis in a report,
and presented the findings to the SCRWA board.
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FSSD – Management
Of Contract Operators
A WBA employee was employed as the Engineering and Operations Manager at the
Fairfield-Suisun Sewer District for approximately 10 years, reporting directly
to the General Manager. In this role, he managed a variety of functions related
to and including the contract to operate and maintain the District’s 17.5
mgd wastewater treatment and pumping facilities. He worked closely with two national
contract operations firms that provided services for the District. While working
with the contract operators, he reviewed contract operator performance, negotiated
changes to the contract, managed the major maintenance program, and managed the
treatment plant capital improvement program. He participated in the renegotiation
of the contract operator agreement in 1989. He developed and managed the RFP
process to solicit proposals from contract operators in 1994. As a part of this
process, he refined the contract operations agreement,
managed contract operator communications, managed information distribution, created
addenda, reviewed and analyzed proposals, managed the interview process, managed
the review team that visited project sites operated and maintained by the contract
operators, and negotiated the contract with the highest rated contract operator.
The strategies he used to manage the RFP process resulted in competitive proposals
from four national contract operations firms. His overall management of the RFP
process resulted in a new contract that ultimately saved over $1 million per
year without sacrificing project quality.
BACWA – Analysis Of Contract Operations
WBA analyzed two prominent wastewater treatment contract operations projects
for the Bay Area Clean Water Association (BACWA) in 1997. The goal of the
analysis was to determine how well the private sector was doing at these
facilities, and
report lessons that could be learned from the private sector. The analysis
included review of the contracts, site visits to each facility, review
of the financial
performance for each facility, and a subjective evaluation of the performance
at each project. One facility was one of the largest contract operations
projects in the country. Review of this facility was particularly challenging
due the
national attention it had received, including skepticism of its stated high
performance. Despite this situation, WBA was able to gather the necessary
information to develop
a supportable case that the facility was indeed performing very well. WBA
presented the results of the analysis to the operations managers of the
BADA agencies.
BACWA – Operations
And Maintenance Manager Meetings
WBA was retained by the Bay Area Clean Water Association (BACWA)
to facilitate meetings for the operation and maintenance managers
of the member agencies. The
operations managers meet quarterly and share information related to operations
management issues. Typical issues include staffing, organizational structure,
succession planning, energy management, security, union negotiations, and
permitting. The maintenance managers also meet quarterly, and
typically discuss staffing,
performance indicators, maintenance planning, technical education, equipment
maintenance problems and solutions, and CMMS.
The above projects are representative of our experience in this area.
If you
would like additional information on these, or other projects that
we
have completed, please contact us.
For detailed descriptions
of representative projects in our other areas of expertise,
click below on the category you are interested in:
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