Partnering with Berry, Dunn, McNeil and Parker, LLC (BerryDunn) to implement the Development Services Solution is central to our permitting, licensing, planning, and code enforcement services. They offer expertise, best practices, resource scalability, flexibility, risk mitigation, and change adoption benefits. Their knowledge and experience will significantly enhance the success of this critical project, ensuring a seamless transition and improved efficiencies across the impacted departments.
BerryDunn’s proposed contract is time and materials but is based on specific deliverables and objectives defined by the Governance Committee. The twenty-seven-month engagement, including travel, is a total of $884,080. City staff will maintain a high level of accountability to ensure BerryDunn’s scope and efforts are appropriately managed and directed.
In 2021 BerryDunn conducted an assessment and gap analysis of the City’s current solution, TRAKiT. Their scope also included reviewing the City’s current environment and business functions, identifying challenges and areas for improvement, and helping the City determine the best path forward with recommendations for improvement.
Their efforts revealed several TRAKiT shortcomings that hinder efficiency and effectiveness. These limitations included:
- Outdated Technology
- Limited Automation
- Inadequate Reporting and Analytics
- Insufficient Integration
They also identified a significant number of manual processes that were a direct result of TRAKiT’s limitations and previous implementation issues. The TRAKiT system has numerous complex workarounds and capability gaps, making it difficult to migrate to a modern and fully enabled system easily and cleanly.
The City has chosen an industry-leading solution to replace TRAKiT. To ensure the success of this extensive and complex implementation and business operations change, where the City can fully utilize best-in-class processes and system capabilities, we require the domain knowledge and the experience of BerryDunn to lead and oversee implementation activities. BerryDunn is uniquely positioned to support the City across four primary areas.
Specialized Knowledge and Experience: In addition to conducting the assessment and gap analysis 2021, BerryDunn led the City through discovery, requirements, RFP, proposal evaluation, and contract negotiations over the last year, culminating in the selection of a modern solution from Clariti and their implementation partner Unisys. BerryDunn is also leading this same scope and Clariti implementation for another city of similar size and complexity. This Plano-specific knowledge gained through their previous engagements, their direct experience implementing this solution for another City, and their expertise as a municipal consultant will help ensure the City gets the total value from this system while expediting the implementation and instituting best practices.
Resource Optimization: The City has numerous large and enterprise-wide projects currently underway. Leveraging BerryDunn will not only help ensure the success of this project but also other major projects by optimizing the allocation of internal resources.
Risk Avoidance and Mitigation: BerryDunn will help to establish mitigation strategies and contingency plans to minimize the impact of potential issues on the project. This project involves multiple stakeholders, including end-users, executives, Technology Solutions staff, and external customers.
Change Management: BerryDunn’s domain knowledge will be leveraged to facilitate decisions where the City’s processes must change or where the solution must be configured to address our specific needs. Through their neutrality and objective advice, BerryDunn can address the challenges associated with change, ensure successful outcomes, and identify areas for improvement.
Quality and Testing: In collaboration with Technology Solutions and each business, BerryDunn will help to ensure that the project and solution meet the required quality standards. They will develop quality assurance plans, conduct testing and validation, and provide feedback to the City to address any issues.
If the City of Plano does not approve this request for implementation services, this project could result in issues that will significantly extend the timeline and cost. A successful implementation will provide the City with a solution that can be used immediately and grow with our evolving processes, eliminating the costs and disruptions associated with changing solutions for reasons that could have been prevented. BerryDunn’s involvement mitigates risks related to a large, complex project involving multiple stakeholders, workflows, and other systems.
The DSSR project Governance Committee requests their services to prevent potential struggles leading to an ineffective and inefficient solution implementation.
The City is authorized to purchase from a cooperative purchasing program with another local government or local cooperative organization pursuant to Chapter 271 Subchapter F of the Texas Local Government Code and by doing so satisfies any State Law requiring local governments to seek competitive bids for items. (TIPS Contract No. 200601 and City of Plano Contract No. 2023-0504-X)