Memorandum

City of Lawrence

Planning & Development Services

TO:	David L. Corliss, City Manager
FROM:	Todd Girdler, Senior Transportation Planner
CC:	Cynthia Boecker, Assistant City Manager Diane Stoddard, Assistant City Manager Scott McCullough, Planning and Development Services Director
Date:	August 29, 2008
RE:	Approval of Contract with LSA for On-Call Traffic Modeling Services

On October 24, 2007 the Lawrence-Douglas County Metropolitan Planning Organization (MPO) approved a 2008 Unified Planning Work Program (UPWP) that includes an on-call modeling consultant project for up to $15,000 in 2008. The MPO programmed $12,000 in federal transportation planning funds for this project. In recent years the MPO has had this type of contract to supply modeling services to supplement the in-house MPO staff.

On February 19, 2008 the City Commission approved a staff request to seek qualifications and proposals for obtaining on-call traffic modeling services for the MPO. This resulted in six firms (LSA, Parsons Brinckerhoff, Olsson & Associates, BWR, George Butler Associates, Alliance Transportation Group) submitting their qualifications and, after staff review, three firms (LSA, Parsons Brinckerhoff, Olsson & Associates) were asked to submit proposals. The RFP for this project was sent to these three firms on March 27^th and the proposals were returned to the City by April 10^th. After a review of the proposals the MPO decided to enter into negotiations with LSA as their first choice. LSA sent a letter to the MPO staff on June 6^th to provide needed detail of unit costs for this contract and to, upon signatures, execute this on-call modeling contract for 2008 and 2009. This letter has since been reviewed and revised by John Miller in Legal services. The contract is set at a cost up to $15,000 for 2008 and the cost limit for 2009 will be determined later. The MPO and City will only pay for the amount of services they use on a time and materials basis.

The MPO has had similar contracts in place for several years but has not used all of its planned funding each year. In those cases the unused funds for traffic modeling simply carryover to the next year’s UPWP. It is likely that this will be the case again for 2008. However, with new MPO staff being hired and the need for traffic model training and possibly model work for corridor or area studies needed later this year, it is difficult to determine how much of this $15,000 may be needed in 2008.

Since the MPO has already approved this project which will be 80% MPO funded, it seems reasonable to execute this contract with LSA so that we can use these services as needed. Since the MPO uses the City as its procurement officer this contract needs to be executed by the City on behalf of the MPO. At this point we have received a contract letter to sign and the services proposal from LSA.

Staff requests that you place this item on a City Commission agenda so that they may approve the execution of this contract with LSA and direct the appropriate City official to sign this letter so that we can return it to LSA and get them under contract to begin service. Attached are copies of the RFP, consultant proposal, and the contract letter for your review.