Item 24 - American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Consulting Services

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Grant Thornton Public Sector LLC City of Santa Ana | RFQ 21- 093 Revised Proposal Use or disclosure of data contained on this sheet is subject to the restriction on the title page of this proposal or quotation. 23 approach. With our team supporting the City’s administrative needs in the background, this approach allows the City’s project managers to focus directly on the overall performance of the project. As discussed in the October 28, 2021 interview, if a project already has an eligibility determination, then our team will accelerate past Phase 1 of our approach to assess the project for opportunities to support in the administrative data and information collecting and communicating necessary to emerge from Phases 2 or 3. For future projects, the Grant Thornton Team is prepared to support the administrative needs of the City’s project managers by seamlessly integrating into the project through open and accessible communication to extract the critical administrative data and information needed to demonstrate the project’s compliance with programmatic and federal regulatory requirements with as little interruption as possible to the progress of the project itself or the overall operations of the project manager’s department. By following the activities listed for each phase our team will develop and compile the documentation necessary to tell the project’s compliance story in real team. By focusing on communication and audit readiness our approach is scalable and flexible to provide the city with only the services it needs. Our approach will include the following phases. • Phase 1: Pre-Award (Assess). In this phase our team will assess a project for its eligibility according to programmatic policies and guidance. Our team will commit to the foundation for the successful implementation of the project by vetting it through our eligibility determination process. Our team will work with the city to identify, analyze, and communicate the necessary information needed to demonstrate the project’s eligibly through the Treasury’s eligibility framework and tests. Our determinations will go further to also discuss and educate on the project’s anticipated reporting and uniform guidance compliance requirements. • Phase 2: Award (Procure). Once a project has been determined, and properly justified, as eligible, our team will engage in assisting the city with documenting the procurement the critical goods and services needed to implement the project. Activities in this phase include the performance of policies and procedures reviews to identify gaps in adherence to compliance requirements and recommendations to mitigate risks for non-compliance. During this phase our team will enable the City to demonstrate compliance through the compilation of procurement and labor activity documents, documentation of procurement decisions in alignment with compliance best practices, and documentation of risk mitigation employed to bring practices into compliance. • Phase 3: Post-Award (Monitor). Demonstrating oversight of a project is a critical step in the process of communicating compliance to the federal government’s uniform guidance for grant awards. Whether the project calls for the oversight of subrecipients, vendors, or force account labor staff and equipment, our team will assist the City in developing and executing monitoring plans designed to extract data and information necessary to meet reporting and compliance obligations. Our team will develop communications strategies and data capturing tools to meet the unique needs of the project and capabilities of the project managers. • Phase 4: Closeout. In our experience, the best time to focus on audit readiness is when all the decisions that made a project successful are still fresh in the team’s mind. Our closeout phase is designed to be the final stop of the project’s lifecycle wherein not only are expenditures reconciled to the project’s budgets and progress reports, but the various procurement and programmatic decisions are revisited to enable an opportunity to completely align those decisions to programmatic requirements and guidance. Our team will reconcile all project expenditures to demonstrate consistency with the amounts reported by the city in quarterly and annual reports. Our team will also compile all determinations, justifications, procurement and oversight documents, and other support documents into one organized package ready for review by outside auditors. In implementing this approach to assist the city in its management of the disbursement of its payments from ARPA, our team will be supported by our Public Audit Subject Matter Expert, Rachel Stushek. Rachel has over 17 years of experience providing auditing support to non-profit organizations and 4 years of experience working with Federal entities. She has experience serving under audits that were