Municipalities · Counties · MPOs · Park & conservation districts
Capacity for agencies with more adopted work than staff hours.
Public agencies rarely have a knowledge problem. They have an hours problem — a work program adopted in full, a staff smaller than the program assumed, and deliverables with grant deadlines attached.
The tasks that slip are the ones nobody owns.
Every work program has them. The land use analysis that supports the corridor study. The demographic and housing profile the committee keeps asking for. The engagement summary that has to be written before the next round can start. The performance baseline that has to exist before the dashboard means anything.
None are difficult. All take a person and forty to a hundred and twenty hours, and that person is already staffing three committees. So the task moves to the next quarter, then the next work program, and then it becomes a finding.
This practice exists to absorb exactly those tasks, at a size that fits inside a small purchase or a task order.
I am the staff person with the adopted deliverable and the committee calendar. The work is scoped by someone who knows what a defensible public work product has to survive.— Kenneth Wolfrum, MPA
What agency staff say matters
- Deliverables that arrive on the committee's calendar, not after it
- Methodology that survives a public question, an audit, and a successor
- Someone who already understands federal and state process
- Right-sized scopes — a task order, not a master agreement
- A consultant who knows the region rather than learning it on your budget
Based in Northwest Indiana. Working across Indiana and Illinois.
Service areas
Four places this adds capacity
Land use & development analysis
Existing and future land use analysis, infill and opportunity-area identification, corridor land use assessment, transit- and trail-oriented development analysis, zoning and ordinance review, housing supply and affordability profiles, buildout and capacity analysis.
Useful when a corridor study or plan update needs the land use half of the analysis and staff time is committed elsewhere.
Demographic, economic & performance data
Demographic and economic base analysis, projections, economic and fiscal impact assessment, performance measure development and baselines, indicator dashboards, and documentation written so the next person can reproduce it.
Useful when a plan, grant application, or committee needs numbers that hold up in public.
Public engagement & facilitation
Workshop and charrette design and facilitation, focus groups, stakeholder interviews, survey design and analysis, pop-up and targeted outreach, and the engagement summaries that document how input actually shaped the plan.
Useful when a participation plan commits you to involve or collaborate levels and someone has to run the rooms and write it up.
Conservation, parks & outdoor recreation
Parks and outdoor recreation planning, greenway and trail planning support, natural resource and open space inventory, level-of-service and gap analysis, and grant-ready documentation for recreation and conservation funding programs.
Useful when a trail, greenway, park, or open space effort needs the planning document that makes it fundable.
How to contract
Three ways to bring this in
Discrete task order
One named deliverable, fixed fee, fixed date — sized deliberately to fit inside small purchase authority so it does not require a full procurement to get moving.
Subconsultant
Under a prime on a larger study, carrying the land use, data, engagement, or conservation component. Firms use this to add regional depth without adding staff.
On-call capacity
A standing block of hours drawn against as needs arise across a program year, without a new procurement each time.
Ready for your procurement file
W-9, certificate of insurance, capability statement, references, and a fixed-fee scope you can encumber — available on request and sent with the first reply. Where a federal-aid cost proposal is required, costs are built as direct labor plus a safe-harbor indirect rate plus a fixed fee, consistent with 23 CFR 172. Public agency ranges are published on the fee schedule.
Have a task in your work program that keeps sliding?
Tell me which one. If this practice can carry it, you get a scope and a fixed fee. If not, you get an honest referral instead of a proposal.