During January, the Denali Commission staff closed out the FY 2008 project nomination process, including notices to project sponsors about the status of their project nominations.

In February and throughout the rest of the year, Transportation Program staff will return its focus to two primary tasks, financial document development and management and general project management. Financial document completion is subject to funding availability, which continues to be a challenge. While we expect our final funding distributions in the near future, there could still be some delays in getting approved documents to project sponsors. Construction funding remains a priority, but we expect to be able to move all project documents to sponsors within the next two months.  

Staff generally executes project management tasks through one of two approaches. One approach, used with agency sponsors or partners like the Federal Highway Administration's Western Federal Lands Highway Division (WFLHD) and the US Army Corps of Engineers (COE) is akin to a client-consultant relationship. Denali Commission staff work with project managers to stay up on project development status and fund transfers. We attend project meetings and community meetings as needed, review and process project documents, and generally ensure communities keep up to date on progress. Overall, our partners do an excellent job of working with staff and show a real commitment to getting projects to and through the construction phase.

Staff uses a more hands-on approach when local governments or organizations are developing projects. Local sponsor project assignments have grown out of Denali Commission's interest in seeing communities build a capacity to manage projects on their own in the future. In these cases, staff works with the sponsor to develop a Request for Proposals to bring in a consultant-engineering firm. Once the engineering firm is under contract, staff works with the community and the contractor to develop a work plan for the project and then routinely check with contractor and the community on progress with a formal step-by-step reviews and approvals required by Denali Commission staff.  

If the project is in the design phase, our two primary partners, WFLHD and COE depending on the project type, will review engineering documents, including construction bid packages for the Denali Commission. If the project is under construction, our partners will, at the Denali Commission's request, conduct construction inspections, including field office reviews.

In both approaches to project development, the Transportation Program staff maintains a constant series of communication links with communities and engineering firms/agencies to ensure projects maintain proper scope, schedule and budget. In the early days of the program, fieldwork by staff ranged in the 5-10% range in terms of overall staff time. As more local sponsors develop projects and more construction gets underway it is clear that percentage of time spent in the field, especially during the summer field season is increasing to toward the 20% range.

A meeting of particular importance this month is the Kivalina Evacuation Road status report to the community of Kivalina and the Northwest Arctic Borough in Kivalina. The February 20 meeting will be a chance for staff to report on project progress, and it will be a chance for the COE to report in on their shoreline protection plans for the coming year. Work on the evacuation road has revealed important information that will be critical to the community's ongoing discussion on village relocation.

Another important meeting this month is the February 11-15 Alaska Forum on the Environment. Not only is this an excellent opportunity to network with rural communities from around Alaska, it is an important opportunity to get updates on important issues as broad as climate change and as specific as ATV trail and road development practices. Throughout this week of presentations and meetings, you will be able to connect with Denali Commission staff and management.