By Renee Hoekstra, CVS – RHA, LLC
The SAVE International U.S. Advocacy for Value (USAV) Committee, in alignment with the Arizona Chapter of the American Public Works Association (APWA), continues to focus on aiding its mission to support U.S. federal, state, and local governments to maximize the delivery of value by connecting people, organizations, and resources. We had the opportunity to present the Town of Gilbert’s approach to embracing Value within their organization at the 2024 APWA Arizona Chapter’s Summer Conference, with over 1000 attendees, in Tucson, Arizona.
The Town is in their infancy when it comes to developing a value program, but they are excited about the results they have achieved to date, as they have delivered key projects to support the Town and their citizens today and into the future. Although the Town is not a large municipality, they are developing a Value Management Program to support their needs.
The presentation was titled: Tools for Delivering Organizational Value for Public Works Infrastructure in The Town of Gilbert. It was sponsored by SAVE with an effort to continue to support USAV and was given by Susanna Struble, Gilbert Town Engineer, and Renee Hoekstra, Partner with RHA, LLC. A synopsis of the presentation follows:
The Capital Improvement Plan (CIP) for the Town of Gilbert is a 10-year planning document consisting of Water, Wastewater, Storm Water, Streets, Traffic, Municipal Facilities, Parks and Recreation and Redevelopment projects that range in costs from $100K to $650M. The FY24 CIP is a $3.88B program with 421 total projects with 216 currently active and in execution. These projects have been vetted, prioritized, and financially planned to provide the right infrastructure at the right time for the community while embracing the long-term needs for the community. The Town’s mission is to be a thriving community today and well into the future. But how do we maintain the forward progress on these vital and critical infrastructure improvements within the CIP with the volatile market we currently exist in and maintain that vision quality and long-term value to the community.
To meet the Town’s mission to be “The City of the Future”, the capital team started applying Value Methodologies (VM) to the high-profile capital improvement project delivery process several years ago. These methodologies have provided improvements in functional performance, overall project quality, risk management, stakeholder coordination, and initial and life‑cycle costs to support justification and the implementation of quality and value of the project designs and construction to the community. With today’s market volatility, we are broadening our application of these tools and putting additional emphasis on developing a complete organizational understanding of projects, defining value functions, defining performance attributes to prioritize projects and define expected successful outcomes. The Town’s leadership is embracing these applications as they support the decision-making process to provide a long-term sustainable community. The VM tools show how they have been used to provide the needed insight into the projects to effectively balance costs with delivery of the right project for the right value to the community.
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