Services

Disaster Recovery

 

Strategy & Coordination

Disaster recovery is principally about building confidence and managing expectations. At the same time, it is also about process efficiency and maximizing opportunity. SGD Urban Solutions understands the multitude of pressures and influences that come upon the recovery process and helps clients get ahead of the curve to rebuild as rapidly and smoothly as possible. With more than 15 years of experience engaging with recovery stakeholders of all levels, SGD helps clients make the best strategic decisions to achieve their goals. This includes:

  • establishing new coordination and collaboration mechanisms to leverage resources, maximize process efficiency, and get the biggest bang for the buck,

  • program and project sequencing,

  • development of outcome-driven performance measures to evaluate progress.

Recovery Planning

Any plan is only as good as it is implementable. SGD brings decades of best practices and lessons learned from recovery planning processes at a wide variety of scales to help ensure that the valuable time and effort that goes into the planning process yields high-impact transformative results.

Planning following a disaster is a unique undertaking with different demands than planning under normal steady-state conditions. The inherent urgency of the post-disaster environment and opportunity to inform large one-time investments demands a planning process where everything is compressed. This additional pressure requires innovative approaches to everything… timing, communications, data-gathering and analysis, public and stakeholder engagement, solution development, feedback loops, adoption, and implementation. Political and financial pressures are also compressed and require dedicated attention for success.

SGD US helps clients develop and implement innovative recovery planning processes that are:

  • integrated with existing plans and frameworks, neighboring and regional recovery initiatives, and effective implementation mechanisms,

  • rooted in open, transparent, and inclusive participatory engagement, and

  • tailored to maximizing recovery impact and leveraging the use of limited disaster-related funding.

Program Management

Among the many challenges of post-disaster recovery is that of implementing and managing a multitude of new programs, many of which are at a scale that overwhelms existing capacity. SGD brings its substantive experience in program management and coordination to help clients with all aspects of the delivery process… from application, program design, and launch to administration, monitoring, and closeout.

SGD US brings a highly specialized understanding of HUD Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funding, including waiver requests, reporting, and audits. It also provides a strong familiarity with FEMA recovery programs and authorities, such as Public Assistance (PA), Individual Assistance (IA), and the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP), as well as SBA’s Disaster Recovery Loan programs. This handful of programs makes up the lion’s share of assistance following a disaster, but must still be leveraged with other Federal/public resources (both disaster-related and annually-appropriated/standing programs) as well as those from philanthropy and the private-sector.

In addition, SGD helps clients incorporate principles of Benefit-Cost Analysis (BCA) into the formulation and evaluation of project design alternatives. An important element of this the identification, quantification, and ultimate monetization (where possible) of social and environmental benefits to a project. Maximizing the flexibility of the various Federal Agency BCA methodologies helps to more thoroughly articulate the full scope of costs and benefits of a project as well as lending support to project eligibility.

Adaptation & Resilience

 

SGD believes that resilience is a fundamental principal of sustainability… meaning in order for a thing to be sustainable, it must consider risk. Thoughtful analysis of risk (resilience) and natural resources (sustainability) across the physical, social, natural, and economic landscape is at the core of what SGD brings to any project. This analysis employs a systems (often regional) perspective and is informed by cross-cutting attention to social equity.

SGD also believes that effective planning and design for adaptation and resilience must be multi-disciplinary. Having worked collaboratively with leading professionals both within and outside the planning and design disciplines, SGD speaks a variety of professional languages that helps bring various skills and bases of knowledge into a cohesive collaborative effort. Examples are helping designers to better understand and appreciate benefit-cost analysis or helping policy makers to better understand and appreciate findings of social, economic, and natural scientists.

Hazard Mitigation & Risk Analysis

 

As a fundamental lens through which to view resilience, a thorough understanding of risk is essential (and too often misunderstood or mischaracterized). SGD looks at risk from a systems perspective with consideration of key dependencies and inter-dependencies. This helps clients make better-informed decisions. The principal equation by which risk is examined is Risk = Hazard x Exposure x Vulnerability. Thus, risk is evaluated for multiple types of hazards at various scales (i.e., hazard sets). Assets (physical, social, economic, natural) are then evaluated for their exposure and vulnerability (sensitivity).

It is with a thorough understanding of risk that SGD helps clients then prioritize mitigation investments and develop the most appropriate and effective design solutions that maximize co-benefits for resilient outcomes.

Research & Policy Analysis

 

SGD assesses program and policy outcomes using performance-based metrics that align with the client’s policy goals. Through analysis of fiscal and other economic implications, evidence-based policy recommendations help clients make well-informed decisions that maximize public benefit. SGD also conducts research to identify and evaluate various approaches to achieving particular policy goals in order to ensure that recommendations are incorporating national and international best practices. Policy areas of focus include public infrastructure (water, transportation), disaster recovery, and hazard mitigation.

Expert Witness Testimony

 

SGD provides expert witness analysis and testimony for litigation involving the use of HUD CDBG-DR funds. These services come from years of high-level experience managing HUD’s CDBG-DR program at the national level. This experience includes drafting and legal clearance of Federal Register Notices, development and update of program policies, development of reporting structures, leading and overseeing monitoring visits to grantees and sub-grantees, issuance of monitoring reports, and implementing corrective actions. Experience also includes responding to findings from the HUD Office of Inspector General (OIG), Government Accountability Office (GAO), and the House Committee on Oversight and Reform.