we will have an impact on that habitat reserve program. considering the amount of work that is going on in the field, and they are resolving the issues as they arise. goowe have had to work on a schedule amendment to to some operational constraints for our system shutdown.

you have to monitor it, and we did that. it ran into an obstruction under the railroad. we are working that issue out right now. we are expecting to start tunnelling with a different alignment this march. there has been done contaminated groundwater in the east bay, and we have modified our

construction effort. there has been the discovery of a number of archaeological sites. in one instance, we have to tunnel to avoid a sensitive site. we tried to identify any potential other sites that will be in our way. native american artifacts -- i do not believe we did identify any human remains common -- human remains, but there is a process we need to go through to assess what is found, and it involves the closest to the sentence -- descendants.

they do get removed and inspected by the experts 3 your -- by the experts. in most cases we put him in the exact location. >> they are reburied in? >> in most cases, yes. >> i understand remains, but the procedure for artifacts is to read very -- rebury. >> it is interesting. >> i could inquire. >> is a practice or the law?

>> all of these are controlled by various resources. but there are regulations that require you to do that? >> thep control all the procedures that need to be followed, yes. >> we will be tunneling under and leaving them because it was felt it would be too much destruction to go through them and replace them. we have the waste water pipeline where there is already a pipeline in there, proposing to replace it with a new pipeline that would have less of a cut, and we are required to do an archaeological study, because we could have previously disturbed remains from the first time needed it to reagan and -- the

first time we did it superior -- did it. >> there is already a pipeline, but there could be previously disturb archeological remains. they are very concerned about the work we do. >> with the new real estate department? >> all of these challenges i have mentioned will have an impact, but when we have managed to move around them. as usual, i like to share some photos, because there is so much going on, and the progress is astonishing. this project is 92% complete.

i am sure you are going to be pleased to hear that for increased energy efficiency, we will install solar panels on top of the roof. >> i was just going to ask. >> construction is scheduled to be complete by april, which will give us a full year to test the facility before thue state mandates. this is a photo of the work is taking place in the treatment plan. this is where the new reservoir will be. work on this project as a whole is now 23% complete.

>> where does that material go? >> by the calaveras road. there is a whole area where we are filling an area that used to be an old landscaping or -- what do you call it? >> not a quarter mile. it is one side of our sunol ballot treatment plant. >> in the lower area by the road. there was a whole design. >> it is tested, right? >> yes, thoroughly. just down the road from the plant is the siphon four project, and we achieved a significant milestone in november when we were able to complete tunneling under alameda creek. you will recall we had some technical issues with a micro tunneling machine, but our team

worked closely with our contractor, and we were successfully able to complete operations. in the coming months, i will give you a presentation on how we resolve the issue in the field. the project is now 77% complete, and we're going to blow water through the siphon by the end of the month, which will significantly increased seismic reliability on the system, so that is another very major milestone. work on the new title is also proceeding very quickly here. what you see here is the east portal of the tunnel, and the contracts are there mobilized last summer. the three rove headers that are required to tunnel -- one of the three is on site, and we will start actual, excavation by the end of this month on that project. moving on to our other tunnel, the bay tunnel. this project so far has gone

also very smoothly. this is a launching shaft, and it will be completed very soon here. we expect the tunnel boring machine for the project to arrive on site in may, and the contractor is planning to lower the machine into the shaft this summer. this photo of the structural rehabilitation and roof project was taken a few months ago, i believe, because the roof structure is much more advanced now. the one challenge we encountered there was that some of the existing peers were somewhat misaligned. our cm team had to work with the contractor to come up with a creative solution to address that in the field, which we did. completion right now is about 25%, and we are estimating that we will be substantially complete by may of this year. the otp order to proceed -- you

see the inflation of the bridge -- demolition of the bridge on top of our dam. that was done on time for us to begin our work shortly. my last two slides basically our report cards on our key project milestones. the first two columns in blue, compared to what we actually accomplish compared to what is planned, and we've missed one milestone on the local program. it was categorical exemption for one of our projects. we are on track now to obtain that this coming quarter. there were some issues with the design of the improvements. on the regional side, we actually missed four milestones.

two of those are associated with one of our support projects. we missed a bid advertisement and a construction notice to proceed. we changed the contract thing strategy, which delayed the contract and going out to bid. it will have no impact on any of our ongoing projects. we also missed the completion of two small projects. the data system as well as the lawrence livermore project. they are both essentially complete. we technically cannot call them complete because of some additional payments and paperwork that needs to be done, but the improvements are in place. i just wanted to -- i know this is a long meeting, so i will try to be brief. in late 2010, we performed two independent reviews on the program, and i believe that your packet included reports on both of these assessments.

in general, staff and wsip team does agree with the findings of these assessments. in the first assessment, we had to independently review our schedule and determine whether it was compressed and also address some of the questions raised by this commission as well as bawsca. carson did conclude that our construction and closeout schedule were compressed, but they did also find that our reports of systems and procedures are or should be adequate to deliver the program as is. they also pointed out that the fact that we have more projects completing in the last year of the program, there is going to be a higher potential for the overall completion of the program to be delayed past december 2015. they also pointed out that we will see a very significant increase in our spending over the next few years, which will test our ability to be able to

address multiple issues. i'm confident that we will be able to task for the challenge because i think we've been able to do that up to this point. there was a second assessment conducted by an independent review panel made up of of your industry experts, and they focus their assessment on our program. this is the first of three reviews that this panel performs. in general, their findings were also very positive, and they gave us high marks for many elements of our program. with us today are a couple of members of the panels, i believe, right? yes? glenn singly is the director of engineering with the l.a. dept. of water and power, and he was the chair of the panel, and he is here today to share some of the findings with you. thank you. or should i take questions now before we get into this?

we will go ahead then. here's the presentation. >> thank you so much for coming up today. we appreciate having you here. tell us how things stand. in your expert opinion on the matters. >> good afternoon, commissioners. it has been very interesting this afternoon to listen to your budget conversations. we are just in the middle of our budgets and coming up with some rate ramifications of the budgets that we are going through. always challenging. we had a great opportunity as a

review panel, and first, i would like to introduce gary graves from stanford university, who is one of our panel members that lives here locally. we had a good amount of experience on the team, and we are very fortunate in the opportunity of reviewing this very large program. i would like to just share a few of my observations and then go over a few of the answers to some of the questions that were posed to us and then some general recommendations we have quickly. first of all, certainly a very large and complex program.

the wsip team has performed in an exemplary fashion. great support from the commission, and we interviewed a few of you as well as other top management, and there seems to be great support for all of the aspects of this program. exceptional safety record. we learn that over 1 million man hours were brought in with just one lost time accident, which is exceptional. i think the time and dollars spent on the environmental work and community relations work has really paid off and very few concerns over the life of this project. just the volume and number of projects you have had without incident is substantial. there are some challenges in the project, in this merging of city staff and consultants staff. always some challenges, with a pointing fingers a little bit and just trying to get used to

each other, but i think they have done a good job in kind of forming a team around all of these projects and say this is the wsip team, not particularly city personnel or consulting work. but that is something to keep paying attention to, i think, and making sure that those relationships are always strengthened. first question was, is the organization performing to plan and procedure? you have extensive plans, and you have seen the volumes of work. we went through hundreds of pages of the plans and procedures. they are very thorough. the processes that accompany those plans i think ensure that things are followed to a great extent. almost by rote, the meetings, the agendas, everything is pretty well laid out, so as

those meetings are held, those agendas are held to, and we know that the plans and procedures are being held to fairly closely. one suggestion that we had was that a configuration management plan might be useful for the program, and that is simply -- is being done for the most part, but this could be a formal process, whereby if there are any major changes to any particular project, that you go through systematically and look at what the ramifications of those changes are. operations are consultant. any other agencies that are involved in that change. you look down the road and see if there are any other changes that are built on that one possible change so that nothing gets overlooked. in the, the details for the meetings -- again, the details for the meetings and reporting

help assure the plan, and his management plans are important to help keep up to date. there have been some varying comments on the risk management plan. some of the field people do not see some of the larger political issues and do not feel they are as important, so they've got their own risks that they are dealing with. overall, i think the risk to the projects in general need to be kept up, and so the planning tool is important to maintain. there we go. is the organization performing effectively and efficiently? the organization is strong with experienced leadership and the ability pull people in that had several years of experience to put in key positions with a strong move for the success, i think, of this program. i talk about the safety program.

has proven itself as being effective. the first thing that hits us was just the sheer numbers of people that were involved, and i think that was a conscious decision, to put a lot of emphasis on the overall management of the program, the project management issues, so there was a lot of -- there were a lot of resources dedicated to the work, but it has proven itself, certainly. very few changes to the project, and effective scheduling, and cost estimating, and then good packages put together resulted in savings in a lot of ways and a good project costs and savings as you go along maintaining those skills to save money overall. communication through the organization in the meetings and reports efficient. we attend several meetings

during the week that we were here. they all seem to be run very efficiently. there were a large number of people there, and maybe, we could look at the numbers that are attending all of those, but it is nice for each member of the project team to keep current on those. some may be able to do that, reading some of the minutes of the meetings, and part of the attendance, i think -- we were a novelty attending some of those, so i think we attracted a few people for those meetings, too. the required reports address issues and provide an excellent continuity. the issues are always presented in the agendas. they are not taken off of those agendas, so those issues are resolved, so we know there is continuity and as things are not slipping through the cracks. that is good evidence of paying attention to the program. the cmis program runs well. the issues are put in once, and

they can be addressed or accessed by a number of people throughout the local project and regional systems, so there is not a lot of duplicate entries. so that is really efficient in doing that. the metrics track provides good indication for helping with projects, and very impressive is the public communication effort through the website and public meetings blogs. other things are really effective. our decisions being made timely and efficiently? again, the metrics that are part of the program showed that turnaround times, that we have several comments from contractors saying we really hate all the detail we have to put into this every day, putting in all these things, but, boy, do they love the quick turnaround time on their invoices and quick turnaround times for the requests for information and the change orders being processed in a

timely manner. so, good job there. a couple of responses on issues -- sometimes the issues took longer, and there were a couple of commons saying that there were so many people in the organization that we would get a couple of various comments from different people, and we have to make sure the flow of information is as planned in coming to the instruction from other people in the system. one of the great tributes to the program is that, though you have a formal dispute resolution program with a dispute resolution board and partnering, there have been no issues that have had to be taken to that dispute resolution board. part of that is knowing that that entity is sitting there waiting for those issues, so there is an incentive to get this thing is resolved without

going to that point. is the status of construction being reported accurately and consistently? this construction is so well documented in a meeting to cover it pertinent issues that i think there is very little chance that major issues can slip through the cracks. i think things are going well, and they are being reported accurately. is the status of construction be reported accurately and consistently? is the cmis being used effectively? i think i have covered that, but it is a comprehensive tool that takes a lot of effort to keep that up day-to-day, but it does give excellent data.

because the data is there, people tend to want to make a report, and one of the suggestions we have later is may be looking at all the reports and seeing which ones are used effectively -- is there any duplication that may be consolidating into some of these reports and making sure you are not producing a report just because it can be done. i think there can be and management should be open to suggestions for improvements. one of the greatest challenges and risks -- i think ensuring that all roles and responsibilities are understood and being executed for plan. keeping personnel working as one team. as i mentioned before, maintaining certainly the communications staff work with

exile organizations, insuring that all the shutdowns are meticulously planned. that has been one of the major concerns, i think, making sure that schedules are lining up just right so those shutdowns can be done appropriately. also maintaining strong support from you as the commissioners and upper management. quickly, on recommendations, i think continuing to make frequent visits to the programs shows support and acknowledging performance helps buoy morale in the ranks. perhaps streamlining positions in the status of the projects change. a penny on size, there is a pretty uniform way of staffing each of these projects, but depending on the size of this project and may be each point in

their construction should maybe look at various kinds of how each one is staffed and maybe being able to consolidate some of those positions. maybe one person functioning in the same role in multiple projects where appropriate. reviewing breakdown structures of projects that are in place, making sure they are not so detailed that it is bogging down progress. like tasks can be combined, just so that you get an accurate picture of what is going on, but it is not creating an undue amount of work. continuing to involve contractors and risks of identification and monitoring and mitigation. sometimes there is a hesitation to bring in a contractor in identifying risks, thinking it is going to give the contractor some ideas of where to initiate changes to the contracts, but over all, it is good to have that extra set of eyes and ears

in thinking ahead and looking towards possible risks and attenuating these risks. and then, consider conducting regular management review forms. a great asset in all of those people that are managing and working on designs and reviews of these projects to help throw out ideas of lessons learned and new ideas of maybe refining the process and the plans as you go along. had several opportunities, you can bring these people in and look for improvements to the whole program. there are other recommendations listed in the report. i think those are some of the broad brush ideas that we had, and i would be happy to answer any questions for you. >> i do not have any questions, but i do have a couple of comments. i thought that both of these audits were very useful.

too often, we think of audits as a difficult or bad thing. some are useful. in some cases, i know we talked about scheduled compression, which i know was not your piece of it, but there has been a lot of concern about that, and i think that report was helpful in sorting out. the obvious answer is yes, things are compressed. and what does that mean for us? does it mean we have a financial capacity problem? it personnel capacity problem? the answer to those are no. basically, there are things that happen, especially with tunneling and major earth building project that screw things up. you do not know those until you get into them. the sense i get was that of the risks we have direct control over, as far as the staff, the assi