Eckert Consulting principal is serving as a federal compliance advisor for the City of Asheville’s disaster recovery following Tropical Storm Helene. Eckert Consulting principal is embedded in the City’s recovery operations to ensure that all procurements and contracts funded through FEMA Public Assistance (PA), the Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP), and CDBG-Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) comply with applicable federal requirements.

Eckert Consulting is a required review and approval step before any federally funded procurement or contract is finalized. This role ensures alignment with 2 CFR Part 200, FEMA policy, and HUD CDBG regulations. The firm reviews procurement documentation, drafts required contract provisions, and verifies compliance with key federal requirements, including Section 3, minority and women-owned business participation, and cost eligibility standards.

Through this work, Eckert Consulting supports the City in executing compliant contracts, strengthening audit readiness, and maximizing reimbursement eligibility.

Eckert Consulting has been a primary member of a disaster recovery consulting team supporting the City of New York (City) in their $11B Hurricane Sandy recovery effort. In this role, Eckert Consulting has provided FEMA policy issue management services to the City’s on their high-stakes and complex FEMA PA issues relating to Hurricane Sandy.

Here are some examples of the successful Hurricane Sandy efforts that were spearheaded by Eckert Consulting:

FDNY Alarm Boxes
Eckert Consulting oversaw an effort to claim damages to the Fire Department of New York’s outdated underground copper wire communication system that resulted in $160M of Alternative Project funding for FDNY. Eckert Consulting created a successful FEMA request package that allowed the FEMA funding to be used to fund a new city-wide FDNY state of the art fiber optic network.

Hazard Mitigation Cost Reasonableness
Eckert Consulting led an effort to negotiate with FEMA a resolution to a major issue with cost reasonableness analyses being performed multiple times on the City’s Hurricane Sandy mitigation projects which resulted in originally approved mitigation projects being determined ineligible after design work was completed. FEMA conceded that more than one cost reasonableness analysis was not needed if the City designed and built a project that met the intent of the originally approved mitigation project. It is estimated that this ruling allowed the City of New York to preserve $500M of mitigation project funding.

Compliance Issues Related to Procurement and Contracting
Eckert Consulting provided numerous analyses and position papers for procurement and contracting issues. Eckert Consulting has been the leader in resolving the most complex and fiscally critical compliance issue scenarios for the City of New York Hurricane Sandy Projects.

Queens Rockaway Boardwalk
Eckert Consulting lead the effort of creating a position paper that successfully defended a $300M construction contract against a federal audit finding that a fee structure within the contract was the FEMA prohibited Cost-Plus-Percentage-of-Cost fee structure.

New York Aquarium Hazard Mitigation
Eckert Consulting lead an effort in attaining FEMA approval for a $70M flood wall to protect the entire New York Aquarium campus from future flood events.

NYPD Vehicle Usage
Eckert Consulting created a position paper that successfully argued that FEMA should pay $20M for the New York Police Department vehicle use based on an estimation methodology and not on actual vehicle usage logs due to the extraordinary administrative burden that using the vehicle usage logs would have created.

Eckert Consulting has been a primary member of a disaster recovery consulting team supporting the City of New York (City) in their $6B COVID-19 response and recovery effort. In this role, Eckert Consulting has provided FEMA policy issue management services to the City on their most high-stakes and complex FEMA PA Issues relating to COVID-19.

Here are some examples of the successful COVID-19 efforts that were spearheaded by Eckert Consulting:

PW Creation

Eckert Consulting developed Project Worksheets for temporary hospitals, incident management costs and Management Costs that successfully captured the City’s COVID-19 expenses. As part of this effort, Eckert Consulting developed a projected need analysis paper that successfully showed FEMA that the City used the best information available in their decision to erect two temporary hospitals in the beginning of the pandemic even though those hospitals ended up having minimal patients. Throughout this rapid process of developing these PWs all costs claimed by the City were obligated by FEMA.

Compliance Issues Related to Procurement and Contracting

Eckert Consulting has provided numerous analysis and position papers for procurement and contracting issues. Eckert Consulting has been the leader in resolving the most expensive and complex compliance issue scenarios for the City of New York Hurricane Sandy Projects.

Eckert Consulting is serving as the FEMA Public Assistance policy advisor to the City of New York (City) in their recovery from the flooding caused by the remnants of Hurricane Ida. In this role, Eckert Consulting has led numerous FEMA PA policy issue resolution efforts, including: the creation of a fully documented process to ensure City agencies are compliant with FEMA’s new consensus-based codes, specifications and standards requirements.

Consensus Based Codes, Specifications and Standards
Eckert Consulting created a fully documented process to ensure City agencies are compliant with FEMA’s new consensus-based codes, specifications and standards requirements. Eckert Consulting presented this new guidance to all City agencies who would be affected by this new requirement.

Required Obtain and Maintain Insurance Impact on Grants
Eckert Consulting analyzed existing insurance policies, insurance proceeds received due to Ida and the City’s obtain and maintain insurance FEMA requirements from the impact of Hurricane Sandy. Based on this information, Eckert Consulting documented the insurance impact on the Hurricane Ida FEMA PA claims.

The Eckert Consulting principal led the City of New Orleans FEMA Public Assistance effort for all disasters, including Hurricane Katrina totaling over $1.3B in Public Assistance (PA) and Hazard Mitigation Grant Program (HMGP) obligations. The Eckert Consulting principal represented the City of New Orleans through the FEMA process by performing the following duties:

• Facilitated monthly meetings with FEMA and the State of Louisiana leads for the Public Assistance program for Hurricane Katrina

• Authorized requests to FEMA and the State of Louisiana as the City’s representative for the FEMA Public Assistance process

• Worked with the Mayor, Deputy Mayors and department directors to make high level strategy and political decisions related to the City’s FEMA claims, and implemented these decisions

• Prepared the Mayor with briefs and presentations for his meetings with the FEMA Administrator and the Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security

• Managed approximately 30 consultants in production of FEMA required documentation

• Increased the FEMA Public Assistance funding by over $500M by managing a process that proved additional Katrina damages to City roads and facilities more than five years after the disaster.

• Procured FEMA arbitration lawyers, including a former FEMA general counsel, to represent the City of New Orleans in its arbitration claims with FEMA, and managed the production of three arbitration request packages for a total request of $110M. The first arbitration claim was awarded to the City of New Orleans, and the following two claims were settled successfully in the City’s favor.

• Managed the successful HMGP request to create mechanical redundancy in the New Orleans Sewage and Water Board’s antiquated Power Plant facility. The project’s estimated cost of $143M was the largest single HMGP project in the history of the program at the time of award.

Eckert Consulting was requested to assist the County’s grant management team in drafting FEMA PA appeals after the County became inundated with FEMA ineligibility determinations in the Summer of 2023. Eckert Consulting worked with County departments and their staff to develop properly documented appeal positions for the County to present to TDEM and FEMA that gives the best chance of success. Eckert Consulting created and documented over twenty appeal cases to contest the FEMA determined ineligibility positions including: Contracting costs for their testing and vaccination online portals; Computers for all of the County’s COVID-19 contractors; and PPE, supply and marketing costs for the County’s testing and vaccination sites. Based on the appeal determinations received to date, this effort resulted in the majority of the previously denied costs being overturned and deemed eligible by FEMA.

Eckert Consulting provided FEMA Policy issue resolution services to the Archdiocese of San Juan and associated Puerto Rican Dioceses for the following two scenarios:

• Eckert Consulting developed a white paper that provided a compelling case against the limitations that FEMA placed on the 2018 Bipartisan Budget Act. The paper argued that the FEMA’s positions were not supported by the letter or the intent of the legislation and FEMA overreached their authority with their interpretations.

• Eckert Consulting developed a white paper persuading FEMA to implement a square foot model for determining cost of damages to the massive number of the Archdiocese and Dioceses buildings. The paper’s argument relied on historically successful FEMA programs that relied on square foot methodology due to the substantial number of similar buildings.

Eckert Consulting drafted a defense argument for Santa Cruz County to refute a FEMA ineligibility determination that a procurement and contract for recovery from wildfires was not compliant with federal regulations. Eckert Consulting was able to gather additional documentation from Santa Cruz County and used this information to show to FEMA that the procurement’s non-competitiveness was justified due to the exigency and emergency of the scenario and that the profit and fees were reasonable when properly analyzed.

Eckert Consulting was requested to assist the City of Austin to appeal a large FEMA ineligibility determination for a collective project that included all of Austin’s emergency protective measure costs for Winter Storm Uri. Eckert Consulting drafted and documented a $2.9M appeal package that provided the best arguments for FEMA to reimburse ten different Austin funded emergency protective measure cost scenarios.