Jackson’s Town Council and the Board of County Commissioners convened an After-Action Review Committee to consider challenges faced with both the Snow King Housing/Parks and Recreation Shop, and the Fire Station construction projects.
The committee examined these projects from their beginnings to their current status, to identify specific challenges and provide recommendations for more successful outcomes of future projects. Recommendations cover various project stages including: Visioning/Inception; Planning & Design/Pre-Construction; and Construction.
For Visioning/Inception, the committee recommends there be a pre-established process to help electeds adhere to the community’s initial vision for a given project. The group calls for all projects over $1-million to consider utilizing professional experts potentially including a project manager, owner’s representative, and/or commissioning agent.
The recommendations also include upfront consideration of complexities, size, and mixed-use or specialized components. The committee also noted that staff work plans and capacity be considered in the Visioning stage. Thorough public engagement in this initial stage and visioning is also recommended.
For the Planning & Design/Pre-Construction phase, key recommendations include utilization of newly created templates, which will be updated regularly to reflect the most current land-development regulations and municipal codes. In addition, there is a call to potentially create criteria for ‘Standard Operating Procedures’ for various design milestones highlighting what elements and systems that plans must include including provisions for IT.
The Construction stage will begin with looking at contractor bids, which is where some complications on these two projects began. So, learning from that experience, the committee recommends that if there are large discrepancies between proposed costs that the Town/County team specifically consider reasons behind them.
To help avoid contracts automatically going to the lowest bidder, the committee recommends cost-blind application review. Finally, on projects $1-million and greater, the committee recommends third party review and that construction plans include 3-D modeling to identify design issues early on.
