The City of Sparks, the City of Reno, the Washoe County Health District, and Washoe County have been working with Accela to develop and implement a new regional license and permit program since April, 2012.  The City Council approved the Interlocal Cooperative Agreement on June 23, 2014.  The City Council also approved Washoe County to perform duties as fiscal manager for all four agencies.  Washoe County holds the contract with Accela and acts as overall project manager.

This program will replace current legacy systems of HDL for business licensing and Permits Plus for permits.  

Initially, the system was slated to 'go live' December, 2015.  Due to the difficulty of bringing four agencies on to one platform, as well as changes within the Accela organization, the project 'go live' date has been moved to August 22, 2016.

As a result of the setbacks, The Project Oversight Committee is recommending approval of Change Order 4, which encompasses the necessary tasks to implement the project.  Due to the long contract extension, Accela has brought forward this change order, and additional fees associated with the order, totalling $148,000 (Sparks share $44,104).  

The Oversight Committee approved use of project contingency funds to continue the project until this additional funding may be approved by the appropriate governing boards and commissions.  Approval of this change will allow payments for the changes outlined above, and to replenish the contingency funds.

The Accela Regional License and Permits Project kicked off September 2, 2014 and was targeted as a 16 month implementation with all Regional partners participating.  The contract was purposely very “lean” for a project of this size with a scope involving four jurisdictions and over 40+ combined departments in order to reduce the overall cost of the contract (negotiations were conducted during the height of the economic downturn and all jurisdictional budgets were very tight).  The initial project plan that was delivered by Accela was very aggressive and only included those tasks which were the responsibility of Accela.  A fundamental precept of the contract was that Accela would “teach” the jurisdictions “how to fish” in creating the bulk of the program.  However, the initial project plan did not account for the work by the four jurisdictions to take the project to completion. 

Due to unforeseen issues with the project, such as mandated vendor upgrades by the vendor which halted progress at three different times during the project, delays by the vendor on delivery of key functionality, reorganizations by Accela Management of assigned lead management staff for the project, implementation process complexities with lean training provided by the vendor, agencies short staffing and lengthier timelines for review of project components delivered by Accela, the project fell behind schedule and deadlines to signoff key statement of work deliverables were delayed, resulting in the missed date of the original planned go live for December 21, 2015.   The Accela Project Management team escalated concerns with the overall project plan to Accela’s new management team and a Project reset occurred on September 19, 2015 which established the new Project go live date as August 22, 2016.    The revised project plan was approved on January 21, 2016 by the Management Oversight Group.  At the same meeting, the Oversight Group directed staff to bring the proposed Change Order to extend the contract with Accela through the new go live date to each of the respective governing bodies (each City Council and the Board).  

1. The City Council may approve the additional funding and change order as outlined by Staff.

2. The City Council may not approve the additional funding and change order as outlined by Staff.

3. The City Council may or may not approve the additional funding and change order as outlined by Staff, and direct staff to other alternatives.

I move to approve a change order for the additional funding of $44,104 for the Accela Regional Business License and Permits Program as outlined by Staff.