CCP 02-21-2006 - Laserfiche WebLink

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URS Thresher Square . 700 Third Street South Minneapolis, MN 55415 Phone: (612) 370-0700 Fax: (612) 370-1378 To: Michellc Wolfe/Arden Hills City Administrator File: 37951005 From: Gregory S. Brown Date: February 14,2006 Subject: URS Performauce Review We are very pleased that the City of Arden Hills has given us the opportunity to serve the City's engineering needs over the past eight years and look forward to working with City staff and council on City improvements this year and the future. We generally concur with the comments received by staff at our review in January_ We will strive to build on our strengths while improving the weaknesses in our delivery of service to the City as we move forward. The following are a few highlights of our work performance that we would like to outline for the worksession. . Rcview of Project Activity We have prepared a summary' booklet which oulliues URS' services over the past two years including project descriptions, staff and some financial analysis to assist with the review of our services to the City. In general, we fccl that the significant projects completed over this period have been received well by the residents and businesses of Arden Hills and have been designed, administrated and managed effectively_ I believe that the URS staff interact with residents in a very positive and professional manner and truly enjoy that interaction process which is so critical to the success of municipal projects. Quality of Service We have been generally successful in the variety of communication required during the course of project development however we do acknowledge some lapses of communication between City staff and URS which caused confusion and budget concerns in later part of project development. We also acknowledge that we can improve upon our delivery' time of council memos and other documents to allow City staff more time to review and comment before Council packcts are sent. We have continued to dedicate the same URS staff over the years for our work within the City. This has resulted in strong working knowledge of the City's infrastructure and a strong sense of "ownership" on projects_ Both of these result in higher quality service to the City as well as a rewarding work experience for our staff. The financial performance spreadsheet analysis included in the booklet illustrates that collectively the 5.7 million dollars of capital projects over the past two years have been completed at 102.2% ofthe awarded contract amount and 101.4% of the Engineer's estimate. Although we would prefer the completed projects to be 95-98% of the engineer's estimate, we are very proud oftllC fact that change orders have -