NTTA staffing-up to cut contractors & will recompete consulting contracts (LOCAL REPORT)

North Texas Tollway Authority (NTTA) are breaking with their practice of relying heavily on contracted consultant firms for legal, engineering, planning and financial services in favor of hiring staff. And they plan to recompete consulting contracts in place for years by periodic negotiation.

Dallas Morning News reporter Michael Lindenberger quotes NTTA's chairman Paul Wageman and the new executive director Allen Clemson and  as saying too much is being spent employing the big consulting firms, when work could be done much more economically by staff or smaller firms.

Wageman is reported saying the authority has become "lazy" in its calls on high priced contract firms and as saying: "It's our fault."

The chairman says NTTA needed to find a "a competent, experienced public administrator" and they have only just managed to do that in Clemson, a former county and university administrator, appointed in the summer. There have been three new chief executives in the past several years under Wageman.

"We needed to find a competent, experienced public administrator to the run the agency the way it ought to be run. I think we've done that (now with Clemson). We're maturing as an agency. Candidly, it may not have been happening as quickly as it should have. But it now commands the full attention of our board and our staff," Wageman is quoted.

Clemson says much of the work NTTA has been paying consulting firms attracts charges "three times more" than if NTTA did it with staff. He cited as an example an HNTB charge of $757 for 11 1/2 hours work assembling routine 'packets' for the monthly board meeting. Only a third was labor costs, the rest was "standard multipliers" for overhead and profit.

HNTB engineers on salaries of $150k/year, end up costing TTA nearly half a million dollars a year thanks to consulting contract multipliers, the new NTTA executive director says.

Rick Herrington longtime number two at NTTA, now at HNTB, is quoted by Lindenberger as saying the reason they relied on consulting firms was that it gave them flexibility to ramp up quickly for big new projects and to shed costs quickly when the projects ended.

They didn't want to create a "mini-TxDOT" with large permanent, often underemployed staff.

Clemson has already hired an in-house lawyer at $215k, and has eight engineers on staff. The CEO plans about 25 new staff position to reduce reliance on contract consultant firms - 10 information technology people, other engineers and a landscape architect. He expects to save $4m/year or $160k per position.

He doesn't plan on ending use of consulting contractors - just cutting back in cases where permanent positions can be justified.

Recompete in 2010

And next year they will put all major consulting contracts out to competitive bid.

Many have been in place by negotiated extension for decades.

Clemson is quoted on the rebids:

"I don't have a single relationship with anybody in the (contract) firms. So we are going to make sure that our request for proposals are properly structured, and cover the body of work that we need to have, and don't have a bunch of tricks in them. I want to encourage, and hope to get, good firms to compete. We will evaluate them in very open and transparent way and see what happens."

NTTA contracts up for redid in 2010 are presently held by:

- HNTB engineering

- RBC Capital financial advisers

- Wilbur Smith traffic and revenue forecasts

- Locke Lord (and other lesser persons) legal services

- McCall Parkhurst bond counsel

This report draws heavily on:

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/localnews/transportation/stories/110809dnmetnttaconsult.3ed77d3.html

(NOTE: firms are limited to two names or acronyms in our reporting unless they are unknown or forgotten, then they get the full treatment only once. More than two names is unacceptably longwinded, as well as pompous in regular use. And as for those LLC or LLPs or Incs, like redundant misters and other archaic titles, fuhgeddit - editor)

TOLLROADSnews 2009-11-08