Report to Carson Reclamation Authority
Tuesday, April 04, 2017
Consent
SUBJECT:
Title
CONSIDER AMENDMENT NUMBER 3 TO A SPECIAL COUNSEL ENGAGEMENT AGREEMENT WITH GREENBERG TRAURIG, LLP FOR LEGAL PROJECT MANAGEMENT SERVICES
Body
I. SUMMARY
The Authority originally contracted in May, 2016 with Greenberg Traurig, LLP (GT) to provide it and the Authority’s legal counsel specific legal assistance in the procurement of a new Pollution and Remediation Legal Liability Policy and associated negotiations on the Environmental Protection Program Policy and with Tetra Tech, the environmental contractor. The firm continues to provide technical legal work to the CRA in a number of environmental areas.
Attached is a Data and Information Project Management Proposal from GT, the CRA’s environmental Special Counsel, for an interactive single-source web portal for the master developer diligence and project management efforts. GT’s Legal Project Management (LPM) Office developed this platform to conform the specifications to CRA’s immediate needs in the most cost-effective manner possible. This is a service GT provides to their clients at a rate less than commercial data management services. Staff is in the middle of fulfilling developer due diligence requests, so the project needs to be up and running in a very short time period.
The term of this Amendment would be from March 15, 2017 to March 15, 2018 and would be for a not-to-exceed amount of $125,000.
II. RECOMMENDATION
Recommendation
TAKE the following actions:
1. APPROVE Amendment No. 3 to the Special Counsel Engagement Agreement for Legal Project Management Services between the Carson Reclamation Authority and Greenberg Traurig, LLP; and
2. AUTHORIZE Chairman to execute such Agreement.
Body
III. ALTERNATIVES
TAKE another action the Authority Board deems appropriate.
IV. BACKGROUND
One thing understood by large developers working on major construction projects is that there is a very high correlation between each dollar of estimated project cost and the number of pages of documents to manage: plans, specs, contracts, reports, studies, spreadsheets, invoices, backup, etc. The Carson Reclamation Authority is now the Master Developer of a project that could easily surpass $750 million when all of the phases are combined. Even the CRA’s direct part of the project - the installation of the remedial systems, subsurface structures, and pile systems -- could be over $100 million. That translates to millions of pages of documents.
During the process of negotiating with Macerich and other developers it has become clear that the CRA needs three things:
1. A single repository of all material environmental, regulatory, and planning and development documents related to the project, which can be conformed to specific end-user access privileges and address the management of privileged or otherwise confidential materials;
2. A way to manage that amount of data and number of documents in a coherent and intuitive system; and
3. The ability to share those documents in a manner that provides access to the user as well as privacy and security.
CRA Documents
While, over the past 18 months, the CRA and its contractors and consultants have produced thousands of pages of new documents and the CRA also has possession of the documents related to the acquisition of the parcel from Starwood, there are still millions of pages of documents related to the project that now belong to the CRA but are not yet in its possession. Staff has transferred some of those documents from the Starwood server using the City’s FTP site but that process itself is slow and cumbersome, and then the documents need to be organized in our own system, and therefore we have not used or sent any documents from that cache.
The CRA also now has three 1-terabyte hard drives delivered from Tetra Tech as part of the Termination Agreement as part of the intellectual property transfer. Since data storage on the portal is not free, a lot of this data will remain stored on the drives and not be loaded into the portal (data like the daily air monitoring data for the past nine years). However, some of these documents will be extraordinarily valuable going forward, including the designs of the remedial systems and the “as-builts” of the installed liner and LFG wells and are well suited for inclusion on the portal.
Most of the documents related to the development will be related solely to the vertical development and be produced and shared between the vertical developers, their contractors, and their tenants. However, since the environmental work is required on all five cells and will largely be undertaken by the CRA, there is a significant amount of data that will go back and forth between the CRA and the individual developers, all of the contractors, consultants, and regulatory agencies. Neither the CRA nor even the City of Carson has the capability to manage such a task at this scale.
Attached is a Data and Information Project Management Proposal from Greenberg Traurig (GT), the CRA’s environmental Special Counsel, for an interactive single-source web portal for the master developer diligence and project management efforts. GT’s Legal Project Management (LPM) Office developed this platform to conform the specifications to CRA’s immediate needs in the most cost-effective manner possible. This is a service GT provides to their clients at a rate less than third party commercial data management services. Staff is attempting to fulfill developer due diligence requests, so the project would be up and running in a very short time period.
GT has provided a fixed price for the initial work effort to build and customize the portal, and a monthly fee for several months to provide training, end user support and document migration, including a GT “Data Steward” at a fixed monthly price who will handle the initial effort for CRA and the rest of the project team. We will collectively re-evaluate the need for the Data Steward after 6 months in the hope that CRA will no longer require that level of support. Part of the initial work is scoping the data management project: for example, at this time, we do not foresee the need to have CRA store and pay for the inclusion of most of the three 1-terabyte hard drives received from Tetra Tech as part of the information transfer resulting from the Termination Agreement on this portal. Instead, we should anticipate that those materials will be searched and managed separately by the Data Steward, or in this case, SCS has provided a first cut review of the documents and the “cleanup” and renaming of files will be done by RE|Solutions at an even lower cost.
Going forward, the CRA will end up producing new documents like infrastructure plans, the embankment landscaping plan, the revised subdivision map, all of the environmental/regulatory documents, and designs of the liner and remedial systems that will need to be shared with multiple developers and their consultants and key representatives, including future lenders and equity investors. These materials could need to be available to many, if not dozens, of vendors and others.
Additionally, as the CRA tries to limit the number of engineers and contractors on the site (something both DTSC and insurers have asked us to do because of the complexity of the landfill), there will still be dozens of developer staff, attorneys, consultants, contractors, regulators, and others that need to navigate the portal to either deposit or retrieve information. The portal will be easily navigable. (Screen shots of the portal are attached.) This system is being designed to work with the SharePoint project management system employed by RES. (The portal’s Table of Contents, attached, ties to RES’ SharePoint system and the Project Schedule developed by RES.) Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the system does not rely on unsecure cloud-based data sharing sites like Dropbox or Box, which are discouraged by the City’s and everybody else’s IT departments as being a security risk.
GT Proposal (Contained in the Amendment No. 3)
Problem Statement
CRA needs a document management solution, including a platform\technology, supporting processes, data stewardship, and the policies and standards to manage hundreds of thousands of documents across multiple developers, across the five Cells of development over several years.
Proposed Solution
o Platform - A web-accessible, GT hosted CRA Document Management Portal (with indexing and search features) with individual user-based access restrictions for the designated employees of CRA and its developers and associated contractors (as defined by CRA).
o Playbook - A Playbook or Guidebook that includes the project nomenclature and language, file naming conventions, indexing and folder structure, document filing conventions, workflow and information flow process, alerting features, document views, version control (including some form of date stamping), audit history, identification of documents subject to open records requirements, etc. This would be tied to the Development Playbook being developed by RES.
o Data Stewardship - A data and information steward or curator will manage the site, including document file content, access, policy compliance (naming, filing, version control, etc.). This role will be filled by a GT employee, called the GT Data Steward. See Data Migration and Document Loading.
o Data Uploading\Conversion - A large volume data conversion or upload facility or capability.
Approach
o Requirements Gathering and Prioritizing
1. Gather Document Management Requirements, including type and location of all existing documents as well as planned new documentation types, preferred document management, and conventions and processes.
2. Gather Process and Information Flow Requirements and Preferences
3. Prioritize Requirements
o Design, Build, Test, and Implement
o Design and Create the Document Management Playbook
o Assign and Train a Data Curator\Administrator
o Perform Data File Transfer\Conversion
o Enhanced Features
1. Assess/Determine Additional Requirements (not in Phase I)
2. Design, Build, Test, Implement Additional Requirements
Price Proposal
One-Time Design, Build, Test, and Install -- $25,000
o Flat fee includes GT LPM development and Project Management time. This includes (but is not limited to):
1. Initial client meetings to triage the business problem and define\refine requirements,
2. Development of the product,
3. Testing,
4. Demonstrating the tool,
5. Technical documentation development, and
6. User Training (if and as required).
o Any and all one-time development hours above 120 hours will convert to a time and materials model at GT’s standard rate of $200/hour. GT does not currently anticipate exceeding this estimate.
o The creation of the Document Management Playbook will be delivered as part of this portion of the proposal.
o Initial document loading as defined herein is included in this One-Time Design, Build, Test, and Install Phase of this fixed fee price proposal. See Data Migration and Document Loading below.
Monthly Support and Maintenance (including Technical Support) $5,000
o Applies once CRA signs off that the site is stable and static operationally, i.e., not requiring significant on-going development or modification.
o Monthly Support and Maintenance includes support relating (but not limited) to:
1. Maintenance,
2. Troubleshooting issues,
3. Basic development enhancement requests, and
4. Training of additional users (up to 3 additional training sessions per year).
o Any and all support development and training hours beyond as defined and outlined above will convert to a time and materials model at $200/hour. A Change Order will be submitted and approved by CRA before time and fees are incurred.
Data Migration and Document Loading - Data migration, loading, and access will occur via two means:
o A large volume of pre-existing data from Tetra Tech will not be loaded to the CRA Document Management Portal from an external source due to data storage costs. When and as documents need to be accessed from this data source, it will be done ad hoc by the GT Data Steward. If certain and select documents from this data source are required to be in the CRA Document Management Portal, they will need to be identified and provided to the GT Data Steward. The GT Data Steward will load these as required.
o All other documents will be manually loaded by end users directly or, at the request of CRA, the GT Data Steward as they are created or provided to GT. This loading or posting to the CRA Document Management Portal will follow the instructions defined and agreed to in the Document Management Playbook. Document migration and loading and costs of the Data Steward for the establishment of the initial portal is included in the monthly fixed fee.
Data Storage Fees - $12 per GB per Month
o Each SharePoint site includes 10GB of storage at no charge.
o For each GB over 10 GB, a monthly storage fee of $12/GB will be charged.
The following examples are for reference and estimating purpose only - 1GB of data is approximately equal to:
1. Example 1 - 3,500 .doc files or 60,000 pages
2. Example 2 - 2,500 .xls files or 150,000 pages
3. Example 3 - 1,800 .pdf files, or 20,000 pages
4. Example 4 - 4,800 .msg files, or 100,000 pages
o GT Data Steward - This role will be filled by a GT employee, called the GT Data Steward. See responsibilities defined in Data Migration and Document Loading above.
o Six Month Reassessment - After the first six months of usage, GT and CRA will assess usage, volume, and processes to determine lessons learned, best practices, and changes to the document management processes, policies, and monthly pricing.
Timing
The CRA’s goal is to have the CRA Document Management Portal up within 30 days from the signing of an agreement. A project plan will be developed around this timeframe but depends on the availability and responsiveness of the various stakeholders involved.
Assumptions
o Engagement of Stakeholders - Adequate access to stakeholders and/or constituencies required to define the information flow, data management needs, search options, etc.
o Adherence to “Policy” - CRA Document Management Portal users will follow Document Management Playbook and policy(s) related to standard document and file naming conventions, document indexing and filing conventions, and locations, etc.
o Pre-Existing Data from an External Source - GT will be able to review this data to assess and determine data structure and file format compatibility for data conversion purposes. Once this review is performed, GT can estimate and price the cost of the data conversion.
o Data Uploading\Conversion - GT assumes the large volume of pre-existing data from Tetra Tech will not be loaded to the CRA Document Management Portal from the external source due to data storage costs. GT assumes that as certain and select documents need to be accessed from this data source, it will be done ad hoc by the GT Data Steward.
o Data Uploading\Conversion - GT assumes that CRA will identify some documents\files from the large volume of pre-existing data from Tetra Tech that will need to be included in the CRA Document Management Portal. If certain and select documents from this data source are required to be in the CRA Document Management Portal, they will need to be identified and provided to the GT Data Steward. The GT Data Steward will load these as required.
o Data Uploading\Conversion of File Formats and File Names Compatibility - The large volume data conversion or upload will only function effectively and efficiently if the incoming file formats and file names are compatible with SharePoint. If not, the facility will reject those incompatible files. These rejected files will have to be handled manually, one-by-one by the data steward. A list of unsupported characters and file types within SharePoint will be provided, but they include #, %, &, and *, among many others. The GT Data Steward will facilitate this process.
o Records Retention Policy - GT assumes CRA will define a records retention policy for the documents in the GT CRA Document Management Portal. GT attorneys in the Information Governance practice can be made available to assist in this effort.
o Support - Required end user support hours are assumed to be normal business hours. Once the CRA Document Management Portal is up and CRA and its designated users begin using it, GT and CRA will define and agree to specific end user support hours. This will be done within the first 60 days of active usage.
V. FISCAL IMPACT
The not-to-exceed contract amount of $125,000 includes the $25,000 upfront fee, plus the $5,000 per month fee for a year ($60,000) plus an estimated $40,000 in data storage costs (about $3,000 per month, which is an average storage load of 260GB per month).
VI. EXHIBITS
1. Amendment No. 3 to Engagement Letter (pgs. 9-22)
2. Screen Shots of Portal (pgs. 23-25)
3. CRA Folder Structure Map (26-41)
Prepared by: John Raymond, Executive Director