LA Consulting, Inc. has been awarded six maintenance operations contracts in
California, Florida, Nevada and Washington.
The Cities of Orange and Pleasanton, CA; City of Reno, NV; Contra Costa County,
CA; Seminole County, FL; and Clark County, WA recently retained the firm to
evaluate their respective maintenance operations and implement a maintenance
management system (MMS). Harry Lorick, P.E., LA Consulting president, made the
announcement.
Harry W. Thomas, Public Works Director/City Engineer for the City of Orange,
said the MMS is multi-departmental, covering maintenance operations in both
the Public Works Department and the Community and Library Services Department.
These departments provide maintenance services for streets, sewers, storm drains,
water, traffic, buildings and parks.
Thomas added that the City is also in the early stages of analyzing software
needs and compatibility.
“LA Consulting brings to the City a level of expertise regarding all aspects
of public agency maintenance operations,” Thomas said. “Through our
partnership with them, we’ll be able to better manage our current resources
and to plan for future changes/expansions.”
Steve Varela, Public Works Director/City Engineer for the City of Reno, said
LA Consulting is helping to train employees in maintenance management for the
City’s Fleet Services Division (16 employees, 700 vehicles including heavy
equipment and sedans), and also evaluating and benchmarking activities with
other communities.
“The goal is to evaluate our productivity, efficiency and effectiveness
and use the study to improve our services,” Varela said.
Scott Baker, Deputy Director of Public Works for the City of Pleasanton, added
that his municipality envisions five major benefits from the MMS – 1) Improved
workflow and methods analysis; 2) Better identification of resource needs; 3)
Benchmarking (comparisons can be more easily made with other jurisdictions and
the private sector to assure that performance is competitive); 4) Enhanced workload
and budget review; and 5) More cohesive work groups (employee involvement contributes
to improved employee morale and better performing work groups).
In Clark County (county seat: Vancouver, WA), the MMS, said Operations Manager
Bud Cave, will provide a system allowing for planning, scheduling, tracking
and unit cost accounting of Road and Parks Department maintenance activities.
“We believe this system will bring us benefits far into the future as
we continue to scrutinize our activities in hopes of stretching the available
dollars,” Cave said.
Lastly, according to Greg Connaughton, Assistant Public Works Director –
Maintenance Division, Contra Costa County (Martinez, CA) is using LA Consulting
to plan, organize and implement road and flood control system maintenance activities,
identify opportunities for improving work management and field performance,
and help develop a Request for Proposal to furnish a maintenance management
software product or to provide programming services for enhancement of the County’s
current computerized management system.
“LA Consulting will help us better evaluate Public Works maintenance operations
in order to achieve more efficient and effective use of limited resources,”
Connaughton said. “In addition, the Public Works Department is pursuing
accreditation from the American Public Works Association and anticipating detailed
infrastructure management requirements under future implementations of the Government
Accounting Standards Board Statement 34.”
LA Consulting, established in 1993, provides a wide variety of planning, systems
and technology services applied to public agencies and municipalities, with
an emphasis on systems implementation and technical support for public works
operations and maintenance. Services include public works evaluation and review;
management and operations systems assistance; infrastructure planning; maintenance
management training; and maintenance systems (maintenance, pavement, and facilities).
The firm’s corporate headquarters is in El Segundo, CA, about 20 miles
west of Los Angeles.
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