Project Meeting 2024.09.03

Agenda

• Admin
  • AMPO Conference
• Administrative Transition
  • Admin
  • Discussion of options
• Technical updates

Meeting Notes

General Admin

• AMPO Conference
  • Joe Flood, Guy Rousseau, and Mark Moran will present at the AMPO meeting.
• Thursday Meeting - cancelled

Administrative Transition

• Admin
  • There is a document started (by Joe C) with a list of questions about potential admin homes and matrix of considerations
    • Includes assignments to individuals
    • Includes a notional matrix of Options
  • Agreement with AMPO to sunset June 2025, but would like to use Q1 2025 to transition. Would like to have a viable approach soon, September ideally.
• Pooled fund
  • In the past FHWA and USDOT have wanted to sunset pooled funding efforts and have preferred single consultant teams. Brian said this is not the case. In fact, he was open to multiple contractors. Depends on who the program manager is. Probably more flexibility than understood. Positive overall.
  • Will have follow up discussions to answer specific questions about things like time to set up, transition from AMPO, fund transfers, etc.
  • Brian Gardner suggested a hybrid between Federal pooled fund and another organization. Need to follow up.
• Non-profit organization (ex: Zephyr)
  • Need to research into AMPO Research Foundation setup and how this could be set up as a nonprofit research foundation under another nonprofit 3C organization like Zephyr. Details about financial management to be figured out.
• Consultant program manager approach
  • Sijia Wang discussed program manager service with others at WSP. Program manager role is a common service for large infrastructure projects. Lots of experience at WSP. Accountants and legal service are part of package of services.
  • WSP would also be happy to provide temporary service while the Consortium looks for a longer term home. WSP has had subcontracts with other consultants like RSG and CS.
  • Governance might be one of the thing to figure out; avoid COI between program management and technical work; create contractual firewalls between roles.
  • WSP Australia and Canada can set up contracts with international entities.
  • Overhead question about share of gross receipts that would go to program management. With AMPO non-technical costs were 10% or less. Is it possible to get a read from WSP for program management shares of gross receipts?
    • Sijia will follow up with WSP about overhead and profit.
  • (Jeff N) There may be some COI potential even with WSP, but AMPO does not make any decisions about who is on the Bench and the agency partners make all of the decisions.
    • Joe C agreed though with WSP there would be both issuing contracts and doing the work. There would have to be walls.
• AMPO
  • MPO executive directors will have a discussion with AMPO. SEMCOG and MWCOG among others are organizing discussions with AMPO to see if they want to reconsider.
• Other Options
  • Flavia reached out to RAND but no response yet
  • TTI: They are interested in a pretty different model – not only admin capabilities but also technical activities, such as student research/work and defining ActivitySim for TxDOT agencies.
  • AASHTO: not going to consider AASHTO due to their staffing changes and other considerations.

Technical Updates

• (Jeff N) Installer bug has been fixed with a tip from TRANSLINK