Port of Los Angeles

bluecrane is providing strategy development and project portfolio management services to the Port of Los Angeles (POLA) Grants Administration Office. POLA has a grants portfolio of approximately $400 million consisting of almost 100 projects. bluecrane is working closely with POLA leadership to define overall grants strategy, governance rules and guiding principles for POLA staff, and management approaches to ensure POLA's grants portfolio is balanced across the lifecycle. Other key goals of the effort are to:

• Ensure coordination of advocacy and grantor relations activities across the grants lifecycle
• Employ a reasoned approach to selecting grants to pursue, taking into account many factors including total cost of ownership (i.e., beyond the life of the grant)
• Review a comprehensive "universe" of pertinent grants on an on-going basis and route to appropriate internal organizations for review (improved "grant seeking")
• Employ proven processes for application excellence (e.g., peer reviews, "Red Teams", etc.)
• Facilitate executive approvals through the various phases of the lifecycle, including grant acceptance
• Provide "portfolio level" project management reviews to minimize risks to POLA's grants portfolio
• Facilitate grants close-out and sharing of "lessons learned"

City of Los Angeles ARRA Portfolio Management

bluecrane provided project portfolio management services to the City of Los Angeles' Office of the City Administrative Officer (CAO). We coordinated the City's grant identification and application processes and City-wide management of all ARRA grants received. We provided an independent assessment of the City's current ARRA grants management effort, and reported on and advised the City Administrative Officer on portfolio management roles, responsibilities, and processes as well as metric standardization, process improvement, and risk and priority review.

We tracked ARRA grant activities, and provided a means to track those activities through a database with Dashboard reports. Our Dashboard reports were provided to elected members of the Los Angeles City Council each week and to the Mayor's Office on a frequent basis. We generated reports that were used for presentations to U.S. Congressional delegations. In addition, we created Dashboard reports that were provided to the public-at-large via the City's Recovery website. The Dashboard reports provided insight into the City's success rate with its grant pursuits, estimated job creation, subject area of grants, and dollar value of grants. Moreover, our reports provided information critical to the City regarding the initial “front-funding” that is required of many grants that are managed on a reimbursement basis.