In 2015, Prince George’s County, MD, became the first community to pursue a Community-Based Public-Private Partnership model developed by United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Region 3. The County partnered with Corvias to create the Clean Water Partnership (CWP). Built into the agreement, the CWP was required to utilize County-certified small, minority, and women-owned businesses for 40% of the total project scope—it has exceeded this goal by 47%.
Stormwater spoke with Keisha Brown, partnership liaison at Corvias, about the CWP.
Stormwater: What is the Clean Water Partnership?
Keisha Brown:The Clean Water Partnership has been officially up and running for the past five years. Based on the successful completion of the original pilot to retrofit 2,000 acres in less than three years, the County has grown its commitment to the Clean Water Partnership to now address more than 4,000 acres of retrofits to date.
In 2014, Prince George’ County, located in the Chesapeake Watershed, was faced with many regulatory challenges surrounding stormwater that affected its region and the community. This growing problem included the County’s compliance backlog to retrofit approximately 15,000 impervious acres with new and modern green infrastructure by 2025. The Clean Water Partnership has successfully put the County on the trajectory to achieve its compliance goals, while at the same time making the infrastructure backlog more affordable—focusing on turning the environmental mandate into a local economic development opportunity for local small and disadvantaged subcontractors.
Seeking to proactively address these challenges, the Maryland County became one of the first municipalities to pilot the Community Based Public Private Partnership model developed by the US Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Region 3. The end result was the Clean Water Partnership (CWP), a 30-year partnership between the County and Corvias, a critical private partner for government institutions nationwide that helps to solve governments’ infrastructure backlogs. For the Partnership, this meant helping the County to better address the huge backlog facing its green infrastructure needs, improving local water quality through the treatment of stormwater runoff, and implementing measures to grow the local economy through the utilization of local and target class businesses.
SW: What was the motivation for the Clean Water Partnership, for Corvias and for Prince George’s County?
KB: Prince George’s County needed a more affordable and scalable delivery solution that could make the achievement of their compliance goals feasible and deliver on the promise of benefits back to the community it serves. Corvias was motivated by the opportunity to disrupt the traditional stormwater industry with its public private partnership platform approach to helping regulated governments realign their stormwater compliance strategy in a way that reduces costs, builds greater local capacity, and attracts lower cost public and private capital investments.
The Partnership is a long-term relationship that has helped the County to support its local economy while also seeing significant advancements in the delivery of municipal stormwater infrastructure retrofits with the help of local businesses and participation from the greater community.
SW: What are the County and Corvias’ roles in the CWP?
KB: The County provides the direction and oversight, while Corvias serves a custodial role as the delegated manager accountable for the performance outcomes defined and managed by the County.
Previously, through a Request for Qualification (RFQ), Prince George’s County selected Corvias to serve as long-term partner due to its résumé for developing and managing innovative infrastructure programs and its commitment to accountability as a partner that both shares in the risk and invests in the County’s goals and objectives.
Corvias’ turnkey stormwater management program has proved in Prince George’s County that a regulated municipality can better manage its Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) permit requirements, and create greater community buy-in and education along with long-term local economic benefits for residents and local small minority disadvantaged businesses. For instance, while work sites have varied—from schools, libraries, and municipal sites to faith-based properties and residential neighborhoods—the County oversees the CWP operations to source, design, construct, and maintain green infrastructure retrofits across 4,000 acres of impervious surfaces in the County.
SW: Can you give us some background on the Mentor Protégé Program? How does it work?
KB: Focused on not just achieving social and economic goals in the community, the Mentor Protégé Program was formulated based on a promise to support local businesses as the County invests in improving its stormwater infrastructure. Through this support, the program provides assistance and training for local, small, and disadvantaged businesses, making stormwater infrastructure and construction an economic driver for County government. The Mentor Protégé program consists of a competitive and rigorous classroom and practical application environment for all small business activities, including owner level and leadership training to estimating and bid management.
With over 20 firms completing the program so far, these local firms have been awarded projects ranging from landscaping and maintenance and excavation and asphalt installation to construction and general contractor contracts, stream restoration, and habitat management. To date, the program has had a 99% success rate for Mentor Protégé firms getting follow-on work, even with other stormwater programs in the region.
SW: What kind of support do business in the Mentor Protégé Program receive?
KB: Through the Mentor Protégé Program, the Clean Water Partnership (CWP) provides coaching, training, access to bidding opportunities, operating capital, bonding, certification, and other supportive efforts to empower local contractors.
The program has also offered some real-life experiences for participating firms. Through a pilot project exercise during each cohort, the Mentor Protégé Program firms are afforded the opportunity to bid and be selected to complete a project, allowing them a training space for practical application through the full life-cycle of a project and eliminating traditional barriers for firms to qualify for highly-sought government projects.
SW: What outcomes has the Clean Water Partnership achieved?
KB: The Clean Water Partnership (CWP) has integrated as a valuable and complementary asset to the Prince George’s County Department of Environment’s Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) compliance team. This includes working collaboratively on strategy, as well as managing the majority of capital projects on the County’s Department of Environment’s Capital Improvement Program. The Clean Water Partnership (CWP) will deliver on well over 100 individual stormwater projects, treating over 4,000 acres of public and private land in Prince George’s County. Through its strong local partnerships, the Clean Water Partnership (CWP) has well exceeded its performance metrics for contracting with county-certified small, minority, and women-owned businesses; resident participation; and hiring overall.
Also, a high percentage of contracted dollars has remained in local and regional boundaries. For instance, of the nearly $142 million awarded through the Clean Water Partnership (CWP) for green infrastructure contracts, approximately 76% has gone to county-based businesses and nearly $18 million has been awarded to smaller firms pursuing the mentorship program. Per a local economic study from Towson University, every dollar spent via the Clean Water Partnership has a greater than 2.5-times multiplier of economic development within the County’s boundaries.
SW: What were some of the challenges in setting up this partnership?
KB: Change management in any organization can be challenging. That is why Corvias and the County focused on complimenting each other through integration and partnering. This reduced the challenges and impact to the County that are typical in setting up an infrastructure program related to managing expectations, defining roles and responsibilities, and ensuring there was stakeholder education and buy-in. As one of the first community-based partnership of this kind, Corvias and the County navigated the nuances of innovation while ensuring collaboration remained at the forefront. Through proactive communications, upfront investment by Corvias into education and process development and integration with the County, we were able to minimize any challenges. This included making some process and efficiency improvements that they would have typically had to pay outside consultants separately for. And because we have performance metrics around savings and inclusion goals, it was critical that we create better integration and process efficiencies. Necessity is truly the mother of invention, as it also helped minimize any challenges.
SW: What has been the Partnership’s greatest success?
KB: The Clean Water Partnership’s greatest success has been its ability to integrate with the County and redesign its compliance strategy without taking the ownership and control away from the County and its community. The relationships between County employees and community stakeholders have improved because of the CWP platform, where collectively we have been able to better connect them to aligned interests and outcomes. Today, different service providers under one single brand for the County, managed by Corvias acting as the aggregator, work seamlessly together around performance outcomes rather than planning hopes. Hope is not a strategy.
The partnership has been able to increase production of acres for regulatory compliance, increase local business capacity and participation—gaining community stakeholder buy-in across private businesses, faith-based leadership, and neighboring municipalities. As a result, we have cut the project delivery time, supported economic growth within the County and created much more public awareness to the importance of infrastructure and stormwater management to the broader community.
SW: What would you recommend other communities interested in implementing something like the CWP watch out for?
KB: My caution to other communities interested in pursuing a different approach is to watch out for the tendency of those around you—both internally and externally—who do not have the motivation or desire to change. Surround yourself with resources and partners that are focused and clearly aligned with your why and the outcomes you want to achieve.
In the beginning, you need to ensure there’s an ability to work collaboratively with the partner to define the program’s priorities, goals and KPI’s [key performance indicators]. For example, it’s incredibly valuable to have flexibility through an open project sourcing scheme versus prescribed project selection. It has allowed for greater adaptive management of both compliance and community needs.
As a Partnership Liaison at Corvias, Keisha Brown specializes in creating and leveraging relationships to bring best-practice solutions to communities and delivering solutions to government partners.
>> Read Part 2 (Stormwater, May 2020), where two firms discuss their experiences in the Mentor Protégé Program.
