Los Alamos county defensible space project

Summary

The Los Alamos County Defensible Space Project was an unconventional project that addressed a problem that is widespread in arid forested areas such as the Western United States, Western Canada, and Eastern Australia, “How can communities located in wildland-urban interface zones be improved so that they can be better protected against attack by wildfire?” The mission of the Los Alamos County Defensible Space Project was to improve the wildfire defensibility of Los Alamos, New Mexico by restructuring vegetation on high-risk perimeter properties to interrupt potential fire paths from the surrounding wildland to homes, while maintaining an attractive flora arrangement on each property. The sponsor, the Los Alamos County Fire Department (LAFD), also required that the project be an example for the world, sharing its methods, tools, and lessons learned with other communities. The Defensible Space Project began with preparation of a project plan in July 2002. The plan was authorized by the Los Alamos County Council in a public meeting in August 2002 and was approved by the funding agency, the Office of Cerro Grande Fire Claims (OCGFC) under the direction of the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) in September 2002. It was completed in December 2003, on schedule and under the $6.54 M budget. Over 3,400 homes were included in the project and work was performed on 2,348 properties. Each property was treated as an individual “mini-project” requiring a custom design plan, a property specific work order, follow-up verification, and a property records folder. The project team included a professional project manager and supporting technical and clerical staff contracted from a consulting company, the fire chief and the deputy fire chief, the county public information officer, the county attorney, the county procurement officer, an arborist / urban forest planning and education contractor, and two tree service contractors. The project team created special databases and a handheld computer/digital camera/printer system with custom software written in-house that allowed property designs, property owner authorizations, standardized contractor work orders, and verification reports to be completed in the field. Because the success of the project was critically dependent upon the voluntary participation of property owners, the project included a very active public relations program with public meetings, a local television broadcast, block parties, a full-time contact and appointment scheduling activity, newspaper articles and advertisements, school programs, a booth at most community functions, and a project web site. 70% of eligible properties participated. Project customers were asked to complete a satisfaction survey and return it by mail after work was completed on their property. 950 surveys were returned and the overall rating exceeded 90% satisfaction. Before and after evaluation of the Los Alamos wildfire risk rating (per NFPA 1144) showed that the project yielded a significant wildfire hazard and risk reduction.

Project Background

On May 10, 2000, the Cerro Grande Fire stormed into Los Alamos, NM. News coverage throughout the United States and many countries around the world showed videos of the evacuation of 18,000 people and of hundreds of homes burning. Throughout the event, firefighters worked heroically to save the town from widespread destruction. On a macroscopic scale, they were very successful. The damage was limited to a small fraction of the town and no lives were lost. On a microscopic scale, success was variable. Some homes were successfully defended while others were hopeless. More destructive and lethal wildfires in wildland-urban interface (WUI) areas have occurred since in Australia (2002) and Arizona (2002), and most recently in British Columbia (2003) and Southern California (2003). It is clear that very hazardous conditions exist around the world wherever dense housing melds with dense forest. Reduction of this hazard requires execution of projects that are designed to limit the speed and intensity of wildfire propagation, and to improve the ability of firefighters to defend structures.

Following the Cerro Grande Fire, the LAFD evaluated characteristics of structures and surrounding vegetation that allowed some homes to survive while neighboring homes burned. One of the important findings was that proper structuring of vegetation around structures could significantly reduce the likelihood that homes would ignite and would provide firefighters room to work. Furthermore, the high density of homes in Los Alamos means that vegetation on a given property can threaten the neighboring house so that vegetation restructuring must be community wide to be effective. The LAFD proposed to conduct a project to mitigate the consequences of future wildfires by restructuring vegetation around homes in the perimeter areas of Los Alamos.

In July 2002, LAFD assigned the task of planning and executing the Defensible Space Project to P. A. Smith Concepts & Designs, Inc. (PASCD). The Los Alamos County Council approved the project plan in August 2002. OCGFC approved the plan and released $6.54 M in September 2002. Procurement activities to acquire the necessary contractors were conducted in the fall and the contracts were signed in December 2002. PASCD produced the databases, custom handheld computer programs, and project website required to execute the project while the procurement activities were conducted. By early January 2003, the contractors were in place and the tools that were required to conduct 2,700 miniature sub-projects efficiently were complete. Work with property owners began in January 2003 and all work was completed on schedule and under budget in December 2003.

The Defensible Space Project

Programmatic Requirements

LAFD, the Los Alamos County Council, and FEMA defined the programmatic requirements as follows:

• All participation in the project had to be voluntary.
• Each property had to be individually designed with the participation of the property owner.
• Each participating property owner had to sign a participation agreement authorizing the work, releasing the County from liability, and agreeing to maintain the defensible space for five years.
• Each property owner was to be given a defensible space guidelines booklet describing the criteria and principles to be used for creating and maintaining defensible space.
• All work was to be performed by licensed tree service / arborist contractors who would be paid by the project. Property owners could not perform the work themselves for reimbursement.
• All work completed by the trees service contractors was to be inspected and approved by the project and the property owner before payment.
• Property owners who conducted their own defensible space work following the Cerro Grande Fire (after May 4, 2000) and before the authorization of the Defensible Space Project by the County Council could be reimbursed if they had receipts from a licensed tree service contractor and if an inspection showed that the work was truly defensible space work.
• A public information and education campaign, including a variety of school programs and teaching materials, was to be conducted.
• An education program and materials to be used by LAFD to promote defensible space for many years was to be produced
• The average value of work performed was not to exceed $2,500 per property and the maximum value for any single property was $7,000.
• All cut materials were to be chipped before disposal at the county dump.
• Properties to be included were generally on the perimeter of the town abutting unburned forest. The project was to assess the hazards in these areas, list the houses to be included, define groups so that the project could proceed in a logical progression around the town, and obtain LAFD approval of the project map.
• Properties that received OCFGC mitigation settlements were excluded from the project.
• The fire hazard rating of the community had to be measurably improved by the project.

Project Plan Strategies

The project plan (see http://www.lac-defensiblespace.us/) incorporated the following strategies to assure that the requirements were met:

• It recognized that the most difficult project management problem was controlling 2,700 (which later became 3,400) miniature projects being started and completed at the rate of 15 per day with approximately 150 in process during the peak of the project. The plan included creation of a database system to track each step at each property along with a menu driven handheld computer application for creating property designs and work orders.
• It laid out an execution strategy designed to minimize property owner effort and to make participation as easy as possible. The project accepted all the design, construction, and coordination work elements. Property owner effort was limited to attending a defensible space planning appointment.
• It recognized that the biggest risk to the project was lack of property owner participation due to fear that properties would be denuded or damaged. The project was designed to allay this fear through education. It required that the project publish Defensible Space Guidelines and that a professional forester / firefighter trained in defensible space design engage in “one-on-one” education by visiting with every property owner to distribute the guidelines and explain its contents. A detailed Public Information and Involvement Plan (PIIP) set out strategies to educate and reassure the targeted property owners. The public information and education program of the project was the essential activity that drew property owners into the project. The PIIP provided the communication objectives, identified the key audience(s), identified the critical messages, provided an implementation strategy for communicating with the public, identified the necessary resources to implement the plan, and provided a schedule and budget specific to public information. Some of the activities included in the PIIP were regular newspaper advertisements, regular press releases, a project web site, neighborhood parties (“block parties”) to kick off work as the project progressed, targeted mailing of announcements, a full-time public relations person, and a full-time appointment scheduler.
• It employed a WBS that defined all the activities including project management, tools development, acquisitions, defensible space design, defensible space measures, and verification. All activities in the WBS were logically arranged and cost loaded in a baseline project schedule that reflected the work sequences and relationships expressed in the text of the plan.

Acquisition Strategy / Procurement Management

The project plan identified the resources needed to perform the project and set out acquisition strategies for each as follows:

1. Project Management Services – A task was issued to PASCD using the county's project management and integration services task order agreement. Project Management services included the activities to plan the project and coordinate all the activities of the project and its contractors. It also included development of the computing tools required to execute the project efficiently. The resources required of PASCD were a full-time project manager, a computing tools specialist, and a part-time records manager. The project manager was accountable to the public including responding to special requests and resolving disputes and publishing monthly and quarterly progress reports for review by the County Council and OCGFC.
2. Defensible Space Planning & Education – The focus of this contract was urban forestry and the associated public interface. The work included was establishing and manning a project office, publishing defensible space guidelines and educational materials, publicizing the project on a full-time basis, scheduling property owner appointments, preparing defensible space plans / work orders for all properties, inspecting the completed work, and assessing wildfire hazards before and after the project. To the best of our knowledge, there were no contractors in the nation that had previous experience executing a large-scale urban defensible space project. Notification of the RFP opportunity was published in major Western U.S. newspapers and Firewise Communities Conferences in order to attract potentially qualified bidders. The award was made according to “best value”. Proposals were graded using written criteria. The top three bidders were selected for interviews. Each bidder was given comments to clarify scope perception and the bidders perception appeared to be different. Bidders were asked to bring responses and a “best and final” estimate to the interview.
3. Defensible Space Measures – The project plan anticipated a labor shortage and potential tree services contractor instability by establishing a multiple award strategy. Two DS Measures contracts were let to minimize risk of contractor performance failure. The unique feature of the RFP was the rate table that specified a list of DS Measures items. Bidders were required to propose unit rates. All the proposed rates were compared and a composite rate table was specified. The bidders were asked to agree to the specified rates. Two of the bidders agreed and were awarded contracts. The others took exceptions. The RFP required that the bidders execute work orders prepared by the DS Planners that listed the work items, the quantities, and the contract rates. The DS Measures contractors did not estimate each property. The rate table was reviewed after a few hundred properties had been completed. The contractors agreed that the rates were fair and did not need to be modified.

Project Integration Management

The Project Team and the weekly team meetings were crucial to the success of the project. Creating a project team with clearly written roles and responsibilities helped prevent overlap in effort, helped team members efficiently transfer task specific information to the individual(s) who needed it, and helped prevent schedule delays by ensuring each task had an owner.

The project team was a strong leader model where the project manager filled the role of orchestra leader, coordinating the daily activities throughout the project and participating in many of the projects legal, procurement, and public information activities. The project team was recruited by the project manager by selecting the Los Alamos County departments that had to contribute and by identifying the contracted activities that were most affected by project policy. Even though the project team members came from three corporate entities, the “pay check” allegiances were never evident. The team members all identified themselves as workers of the Defensible Space Project. Team members freely volunteered and team integration happened naturally.

Execution Summary

Contracting

Bidding and contractor selection were conducted as described above. The Defensible Space Planning contract was let to Davey Resource Group (DRG), the oldest arborist firm in North America with extensive urban forestry experience. The two Defensible Space Measures contracts were awarded to Trees, Inc. a nationwide tree services contractor, and Baca's Trees, Inc. of Albuquerque, NM. DRG hired local foresters and also relocated some of their staff. Baca's Trees, Inc. transported their staff from Albuquerque (90 miles from Los Alamos). Trees, Inc. hired locally. Ultimately, Tree's, Inc. found that fire recuperation projects had absorbed available labor in the area and they were unable to fulfill their commitment. As planned, Baca's Trees expanded to fill the void.

Project Work Tools

Customized project work tools and procedures were developed to efficiently execute the daily project activities. The project needed a reliable method for maintaining property information and tracking the status of all eligible properties. An MS Access property database was created and populated with eligible property information. The database tracked appointments, property owner interest, work plan information, contact information, eligibility, current status, DS Planner assigned, and the DS Measures contractor assigned. It also computed participation statistics, computed property cost statistics, computed a running total of planned and completed mitigation costs, created address labels for various mailings, had a website interface for appointment scheduling, and linked to the customized application on the handheld computers used by the DS Planners.

A handheld application was created that allowed the DS Planner to complete the property work plan and receive written authorization from the property owner before the DS Planner left the property. The tool captured the data and instructions needed for the DS Measures crews to successfully complete the work without the need of additional property owner or DS Planner instruction. The handheld application synchronized with the MS Access property database. PASCD developed these tools for the project while the contracting process was conducted.

Previously Completed Properties (PCPs)

A project startup announcement was made through a variety of media channels in October 2002. The announcement requested that property owners who performed eligible work between May 4, 2000 and August 13, 2002 contact the project office or register at the project website to request reimbursement. Property owners had 90 days from the announcement date to request reimbursement. Property owners agreed to property assessments with DS Planners to verify work, review receipts, and sign property owner contracts requiring Defensible Space maintenance. The project reimbursed these property owners for the cost of their validated mitigation work up to $2,500.

Establishing Eligible Properties

The first task assigned to the Defensible Space Planning contractor was to perform a wildfire hazard assessment of Los Alamos townsite. The assessment criteria used were taken from NFPA 1144 - Standard for Protection of Life and Property from Wildfire (2002 Edition). The initial assessment of the Los Alamos townsite was completed in January 2003 before defensible space mitigation activities began in order to prioritize areas of the community and to establish a baseline for comparison with future wildfire hazard assessments of the townsite. The high-risk areas had high tree densities, steep slopes, and locations where winds favored the spread of fire. The neighborhoods were arranged geographically into one of six groups. The risk information was integrated with work scheduling considerations to make the group assignments and to determine the order in which the groups were addressed.

Implementation of New Property Work Plans

Property owners in each group were contacted according to the project schedule. The DS Planning contractor sent invitations to eligible property owners by mail to invite them to their group's upcoming block party. Following the block party, the project telephoned all property owners in the group to request an appointment with a DS Planner. The project telephoned owners who weren't home more than once, sent reminder cards, and used door hangers to encourage participation. There were frequent newspaper articles, advertisements, and a cable television program.

DS Planners had set appointments with property owners. The DS Planner and the property owner surveyed the property, jointly determined the work to be performed, marked the vegetation that was to be modified, entered the mitigation work in the handheld computer, and printed and reviewed a copy of the work order. The property owner signed the work order at the end of the appointment. The following pictures give a visual representation of a typical defensible space planning appointment.

Each day property plans were uploaded from the handheld computers to the project database and appointments scheduled for the next day were downloaded. Once a week work plans were exchanged with the DS Measures contractors. The DS Measures contractors were required to complete the work plans within two weeks. Work completion was tracked in the database. Completed work folders were returned to the DS Planners for verification of satisfactory completion of work. The DS Planner left a “Satisfaction Survey” with each property owner. The survey was a quality assurance tool used by the project to ensure that the contractors were performing satisfactorily. Running results were kept so that a negative trend could be detected. 950 (about 40%) of the questionnaires were returned. The average project grade was 90% or better and did not decline throughout the project duration. The survey's numerical results were included in each monthly status report and were published on the project web site.

Exhibit 1: Defensible Space Planning

Project Schedule Management

The project was completed in approximately 15 months with intense defensible space planning and measures work lasting 11 months. This aggressive schedule was a very important strategy to obtain a high participation rate. The project had to generate excitement through the publicity campaign and then execute the work before the excitement wore off.

The project management team laid the foundation for successful schedule management by:

• Committing to developing database and handheld computer tools to achieve high productivity.
• Estimating manpower requirements for each WBS element in the project plan and then following through the contracting process to assure that the estimated manpower was provided by the contractors.
• Building a thorough, fully logic linked and fully resource loaded schedule in the project plan that could be routinely statused as the project progressed.
• Holding weekly project team meetings where the schedule was always reviewed and team members freely volunteered to accept activities to keep the project on schedule.
• Publishing the schedule and the project status for the public to see was an effective schedule control.
• Appointment scheduling and measures work were scheduled every day to the hour.

The project manager was aware of the production rate every day and was able to make minor assignment readjustments to assure that the production rate did not decline.

Project Cost / Resource Management

The cost of the mitigation work on any given property was controlled by the Cost Matrix Table and by the list of work items in the property work order. Each property was a fixed price task for the DS Measures contractor. The average value of work performed on all eligible properties was not to exceed $2,500 per property and the maximum value for any single property was $7,000 (as mandated by OCGFC / FEMA). The DS Planners could determine the cost of work to be performed on each property when entering the information into the customized planning application on their handheld computers. By monitoring the total spent on each property, DS Planners were able to balance work plan costs with critical mitigation activities.

The database made planned cost statistics available daily. These were monitored closely. The statistics after 500 properties were planned indicated that the property average cost would be under the required average. The early properties were revisited to make sure that plans were not biased by early fiscal conservatism.

A baseline cost loaded schedule and S-curve were used to monitor and report project progress. Earned value, actual cost data, and the planned baseline cost were used to calculate cost variances each month. The variances were presented and discussed in the monthly status report. The statistical data allowed for accurate estimation of the cost at completion as the project progressed.

Because of the careful monitoring of cost and schedule, it became apparent that additional properties could be included in the project. A Baseline Change Proposal was processed and approved by the project's Change Control Board and the OCFGC. Approximately 700 properties were added.

Project Quality Management

The Defensible Space Project was conducted in full view of the Los Alamos public. One of the risks to the project was that it would make management, planning, or work errors that would cause property owners to decline participation. The project's quality assurance auditors were the people who talked to their neighbors and friends about their planning appointment experience, who drove by the properties where work was in progress, or who might write letters to the editor in the town newspaper. From inception, the project was organized to control quality in all its project management, defensible space planning, and defensible space measures work.

Management quality control and assurance activities included:

• Following all Los Alamos County project management procedures.
• Writing project specific procedures for activities unique to the project.
• Preparing and implementing a Project Quality Assurance Plan.
• Publishing monthly progress reports that were distributed to the County Council and published on the project website for the public to review.
• Maintaining total accountability of the project manager to the public by publishing her work phone number, email address, and a website comment entry address in the newspaper, fliers, on radio and television, and at public functions.
• An independent audit of compliance with the county project management procedures.

Defensible space planning quality control included:

• A PASCD representative audited a fraction of the property plans to verify that the markings were in agreement with the work order and could be easily understood by the DS Measures crews. Findings were reviewed with the team of planners.
• A PASCD representative interviewed selected property owners to assess satisfaction with the DS Planning session.
• The auditor's notes were included in the property files.

Defensible space measures quality control included:

• A PASCD representative inspected a fraction of the properties while work was in process to verify that work orders were implemented precisely and to verify clean-up was thorough. Findings were reviewed with the crew leaders and the team of planners.
• DS Planners conducted a final inspection to verify that the work order was precisely executed, cleanup was complete, and the property was undamaged. Payment was not made until the project manager verified that the signed inspection report was in the property file.

All the DS Planners and DS Measures crews carried cell phones. DS Planner and DS Measures crew leaders met with the project manager to exchange data, pick-up work orders, deliver completed work orders, and deliver completed inspections nearly every day. Crews with questions called the responsible DS Planner for immediate clarification. The project manager received property owner input and immediately contacted DS Planners and DS Measures crew leaders to investigate and take corrective measures if needed.

Project Results and Final Fire Assessment

At completion, the Defensible Space Project included over 3,400 eligible properties. Nearly 70% or 2,348 of the eligible property owners participated. An example of the results are shown in the before and after pictures below.

Exhibit 1. Example of a Property Before (Left) and After (Right) Defensible Space Measures

In December 2003 post-mitigation wildfire risk and hazard assessments were completed. Before the project, Los Alamos had an average wildfire hazard rating of 105 points – High Hazard (NFPA 1144, Standard for Protection of Life and Property from Wildfire (2002 Edition)) within 5 points of NFPA's highest rating, Extreme Hazard. After the defensible space project was completed, Los Alamos' average wildfire risk rating fell to 84 points – the lower third of the High Hazard Rating. The wild fire hazard rating included factors that could not be affected by the project such as the location of a structure, fire rating of home construction, the topography of the area, and community egress. 78 was the lowest point total that Los Alamos could achieve with perfect Defensible Space measures. In the end, the Los Alamos County Defensible Space Project successfully accomplished 75% of the possible hazard rating reduction.