Housing Inspection Services Program (CONUS/OCONUS)

Vanguard, in a joint venture with Tidal Basin and Atkins, responded to multiple declared disasters to assist with housing situations and provide immediate relief to affected homeowners.

Preparedness

Response

Recovery

Mitigation

Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)

Key Project Highlights: • 3 ,000+ badged, trained, experienced inspectors • 7,000+ surge capacity • 2 million housing inspections completed to date • 9 0,000+ inspections completed in response to Hurricane Matthew alone • 3 7+ FEMA task orders for 2017-2018 season

Prime Contractor: Vanguard (Joint Venture of Tidal Basin and Atkins)

Project Dates: 2013 to Present

Project Funded Value: $1B+ NTE to date

Project Overview

FEMA awarded the $163M Housing Inspection Services (HIS) contract in 2013 to provide emergency aid grants to survivors whose homes were affected by presidentially-declared emergencies or natural disasters. Vanguard provides FEMA with a nationwide cadre of trained and disaster-ready independent inspectors who mobilize on short notice to examine housing situations and provide immediate relief to affected homeowners. Providing housing inspections for over 50% of HIS task orders, the team handled concurrent disasters in Puerto Rico, U.S. Virgin Islands, Florida, Texas, California, and the Midwest. Vanguard successfully coordinated with FEMA and other agencies to deploy inspectors and set up control and adjudication centers in challenging environments.

Be stronger than before

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Case Study Housing Inspections Services Program I Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)

Challenge

Vanguard responded to multiple declared disasters, including Hurricane Harvey – Texas (DR-4332), Hurricane Irma – Florida (DR-4337), and Hurricanes Irma and María – Puerto Rico (DR-4339). Challenges varied based on the complexity of each disaster, but included the following: • Register 200,000 in the inspection queue

• Process large numbers of inspectors • Provide logistics support to three concurrent field offices, including tech support for tablets • Accurately assess, document, and disseminate Situation Reports or daily decision-making on mission planning and task order response • Provide highly qualified, bilingual managers for the adjudication center • Develop and staff a field-based process to receive and adjudicate (badge) and train incoming, newly recruited inspectors • Find lodging for inspectors in an area of operations that sustained major damage, with shortfalls in available lodging to develop an expedited badging process in the adjudication centers. We recruited, trained, and badged nearly 6,000 local inspectors using bilingual training and management. Fully executing sweep inspections for Hurricanes Irma and Harvey, we employed an accelerated, simplified approach, resulting in higher numbers of completed inspections and cost savings. Vanguard achieved a major contract milestone by performing 20,000 inspections in a single day on three separate occasions.

• Develop and staff an adjudication and training center within 10 days of receiving a task order • Accurately forecast, quantify, and map rainfall and massive flooding across Texas, including scope of damages, loss of functionality of essential facilities, population impacts, field office requirements, and key actions to take within 24 hours for operational planning and TOPR preparation • Health and safety issues that immediately surfaced across Texas as a result of extensive flooding • Provide surge staff support for operations and field staff • Provide field training and orientation to 450 new inspectors

Badged over 9,000 inspectors in 90 days. Averaged 404 per task order.

Solution

Vanguard developed customized applications to support program management and data transfer from the field, seamlessly connecting to FEMA systems. All processes are tested and support just-in-time (JIT) delivery. The team completed the first HIS contract term and in October 2019, was awarded a five-year, $943 million recompete contract. During a 60-day period, we badged more than 9,000 inspectors for Hurricanes Irma, Harvey, and María in Florida, Texas, and Puerto Rico. Vanguard staff took the lead, closely coordinating with FEMA Security,

Throughout the 2017-2018 hurricane seasons, Vanguard responded to eight disasters, trained and deployed roughly 10,000 inspectors, and completed over 1.4 million housing inspections in a six-month period.

tidalbasingroup.com

Case Study Housing Inspections Services Program I Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA)

Resilience Delivered

Key Program Accomplishments:

Readiness • Developed 54 inspector training courses using tablet, video, and workshops • Held 317 classroom trainings in 35 states • Trained 13,579 inspectors • ISO 9001:2008 and ISO 9001:2015 certified Adjudication • 13,000 inspectors in-processed, fingerprinted, and trained in four weeks Disaster • Executed 37 task orders with 1,521,009 inspections • During the 2017 Hurricane season, task order awards exceeded $300 million. Completed more than 1 million disaster housing inspections in less than 100 days • In-processed 16,000 inspection contractors. Badged 9,000 inspectors in 90 days • Deployed an average of 404 inspectors per task order

Vanguard developed specific solutions to address the services required to complete the inspections throughout the aforementioned disasters. Our successes include:

• A ccess Standby/Deployment Database with automated callouts to inspectors that streamlined deployment process. We deployed 2,590 inspectors to Texas and met all production requirements. • D eveloped an adjudication and training center to register, brief, train, fingerprint, badge, and deploy 9,000 inspectors. • P lanned and prepared situation reports to capture/map damages utilizing data for mission planning and task order execution. We also prepared Incident • V anguard’s health, safety, and security manager coordinated with our planning team to identify and report on health-, safety-, and hazard-related issues that could impact field and support staff. • R ecruited, trained, badged, and deployed 12 full-time surge staff to disaster field offices across Florida. • D eveloped a more efficient and streamlined process to activate and deploy inspectors by fully implementing a scanner check-in process, enabling Vanguard to increase the number of inspectors with work. Action Plans for daily meetings to coordinate field operations teams. • V anguard’s field training team provided logistics support and all training through an expedited approach that focused on Tablet Time training as opposed to traditional classroom training.

• V anguard’s logistics/systems manager prepared and shipped all tablets to lead field office, and our team provided remote and field tech support for all inspectors and operations staff. • V anguard’s planning team coordinated pre- and post-landfall disaster impacts, including data and maps showing María impacts on population, housing, infrastructure, lodging options, and power availability. Situation reports and daily incident action plans were used to widely disseminate these decision- support tools. • D eployed a task order manager to oversee the adjudication center and field training manager. • S tood up an adjudication and training center for Puerto Rico and streamlined the process for receiving, briefing, fingerprinting, badging, and training 5,860 inspector candidates in a 60 days. This involved hiring Spanish-speaking staff, installing badging and processing equipment, and providing Vanguard staff support. • H igh priority was given to hiring local inspectors and setting up base camps to ensure housing for inspectors.

Task orders exceeded $300 M with more than one million inspections completed

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