7913 - Laserfiche WebLink

Home Browse Search

The Corps must be willing to examine and adapt its planning practices. We need to take full advantage of the flexibility which is provided in the federal guidelines for water project planning. 24 Challenges in Project Planning and Authorization The sharing of planning costs, increased construction cost-sharing by sponsors and the participation of sponsors in financing during planning and construction will have significant impacts on the planning and authorization of Civil Works projects. The Corps has already made significant changes in internal planning guidance to accommodate such impacts, but more remains to be done to effect viable local, state and federal working partnerships. Faced with increased financial burdens and risks, project sponsors now fully expect that the planning and authorization process will yield cost-effective plans that meet minimum local requirements in a timely fashion, The Corps must adapt to this situation through pragmatic and flexible approaches to project planning and implementation. There are at least three major challenges: 1. Adapt the cost -shared planning process to allow greater sharing of planning tasks and a more specific focus on the needs of the sponsor and the financing community; 2. Address and alleviate non-federal concerns which differ from federal water development policy objectives; 3. Expedite review, administration approval and congressional authorization of feasible and financially sound project studies and projects, Managing a Joint Planning Process Management of a joint planning process requires adjustments in cost accounting and agreements on planning and engineering standards. Planning partners must agree upon the valuation of planning services provided by each and must determine the services to be credited to each sponsor's planning cost share. Services in kind to be considered include data collection, surveys, projections, computer modeling, public involvement, hydrologic and engineering studies, participation in plan formulation, social and community impacts and financial analysis. Sharing responsibility for construction of joint federal/non-federal projects could also affect the planning process. Frequently, local sponsors request that they be authorized to initiate construction of certain project features prior to congressional authorization of the project -with these expenditures being credited to the required local cost-share of the project. There are a number of ways that this might affect planning, Most require the consideration of ways to fix agreements made at the end of the feasibility planning process in order not to initiate a replanning cycle. If staged construction increases total project costs andJor affects the economic justification of the last stage by increasing its costs, it will be necessary to adapt evaluation practices and financial arrangements to enable agreements to be made on the merits of the total project at the completion of feasibility planning, This will allow local sponsors to proceed with construction with assurance that the total project will be built when authorized, There will be many similar issues and challenges which will require a policy-making environment in which frequent evaluation and reassessment is the norm. Another difficult issue to be resolved concerns the appropriate planning, environmental and engineering procedures to be applied. The Corps must be willing to examine and adapt its planning practices in such areas as environmental protection or mitigation, public involvement, interagency coordination and degree of acceptable risk. It is important that planning partners agree on the scope and scale of planning components and all costs. The Corps will increasingly be asked to trade off among project purposes, and to formulate plans which are soundly engineered and financially viable from a local perspective.