We work with public agencies, businesses, developers, and utilities who lack sufficient staff resources, time, or expertise to move their projects forward effectively and efficiently.  Our clients include cities, counties, service agencies, resource agencies, residential and commercial real estate developers, heavy industry, large commercial companies, schools, churches, law firms, and other consulting firms.  What all of these disparate clients have in common is a need for assistance in getting their projects implemented, whether it’s completing environmental review, obtaining planning approvals, or securing permits.  (For a list of clients served by DHA, click here.)

Are you experiencing any of these challenges?

Your staff is stretched beyond capacity.  Your project managers are responsible for so many projects, on top of other duties, that some projects are getting lost in the shuffle or are not moving forward in a timely manner.  In business, this may mean projects are not reaching their revenue-generating potential soon enough, costing the firm important profits.  In the public sector, this may mean increased complaints from constituents and political pressure from decision makers.

Your projects are getting bogged down by an endless succession of hurdles and problems.  You are encountering unanticipated obstacles that delay the forward momentum of a project while the problems are solved.  As one issue is resolved, another regulatory or planning glitch arises, keeping the project stalled.

You lack the in-house expertise to address the regulatory requirements applicable to your project.  The complexity of the various regulatory requirements for your project demands such a wide range of expertise that outside help is needed to address the challenges.  

Important details of project implementation are slipping through the cracks.  Perhaps the project is overly complex, or maybe the workload of your staff prohibits the necessary attention to all of the details of every project, but the result is that important details of the project get overlooked.

You are struggling to maintain sufficient coordination between the many different individuals and organizations whose participation is required for success of the project.  Whether it’s a multi-disciplinary environmental review team, many individual technical specialists, or a wide-ranging design team of engineers, architects, and landscape architects—or all of the above—ensuring that the work by the different entities is properly coordinated and sequenced for optimum efficiency is a burden that interferes with other important work and/or that threatens to cause costly delays in project implementation.

The needs of the project are being met, but consulting fees are breaking the budget.  The initial cost of environmental review by a well-known firm was high, but the project budget had been adjusted to accommodate the expense. As the environmental review has progressed, a series of unanticipated add-ons by the consulting firm have significantly increased the costs of this work, which threatens to undermine the economics of the project.

If so, these are the types of problems DHA solves for its clients.

Clients are likely to be successful working with us if:

You take pride in the quality of your work.  You care about more than just maximizing profit or minimizing cost; you want to do things right, and you care about producing a high-quality product.  You recognize that this approach can be cost-effective and compatible with profits, and that it can actually reduce costs over the full course of project implementation.

Communication and responsibility are important to you.  You don’t want to be involved in hand-holding, but you recognize that in order for your consultant to work effectively and efficiently for you, you occasionally need to provide direction, make a decision, or provide data, plans, or other project-related information.  Therefore, you are committed to communicating with your consultant in a timely manner when your input is necessary.

You adhere to the highest standards of honesty and integrity.  You are not looking to take ethical shortcuts or sweep real problems under the rug.  You want to be above-board and play by the rules, and you expect your consultant to do the same.

You accept responsibility and have reasonable expectations.  You don’t expect your consultant to work miracles and you don’t expect your consultant to make up for lost time caused by substantial delays outside the control of the consultant.  That said, you expect the consultant to be fully accountable in every way—on schedule, budget, and quality and thoroughness of the work.

You view problems as challenges to be overcome.  You recognize that life is full of problems, and no project is complete without one or two (or more) of them.  Rather than being demoralized by them, you welcome the problems as challenges to be met and puzzles to be solved, and enjoy working collaboratively with your consultants to successfully address those challenges.  At the end of the day, these are the projects that bring you the most satisfaction.

Where to go next?

Now that you know the kind of clients we work with, the issues we help them resolve and what our clients need to do to ensure their success, click on this link to learn more about How We Work.