Report 2015-116 Recommendation 7 Responses

Report 2015-116: City of Irvine: Poor Governance of the $1.7 Million Review of the Orange County Great Park Needlessly Compromised the Review's Credibility (Release Date: August 2016)

Recommendation #7 To: Irvine, City of

To prevent contractors from exceeding their scope of work, Irvine should periodically review ongoing contract invoices and compare billed activities to the contractor's scope of work to be certain that these invoices reflect the work Irvine expects the contractor to perform. Irvine should also ensure that it assigns a staff project manager to projects who can sufficiently and appropriately monitor the contractor's work. In the future, if the council decides to limit or modify the existing authority of city officials relating to contract oversight, it should ensure that its resolutions explicitly delineate the limits or modifications to that authority.

60-Day Agency Response

Irvine has, and will continue to review contract invoices and compare billed activities to the contractors' scope of work. When doing so, Irvine will continue to utilize employees who can appropriately monitor the contractors' work. Note: Listed as Recommendation No. 5 in June 28, 2016 letter.

California State Auditor's Assessment of 60-Day Status: Fully Implemented

We agree that this recommendation is fully implemented but caution Irvine to continue to follow its practices as it describes in the response. As we note in our report on pages 67-68, there was a lack of clarity regarding who was managing the park review. As stated on pages 32 and 33, the city manager understood he was not to direct one of the consultants and that the park review was exclusively the province of the subcommittee. However, we note on page 33 that the subcommittee members gave us conflicting answers when we asked them whether they were overseeing the park review. One member stated that the subcommittee's function was to oversee the park review while the other explained that the overall direction and work of the park review was determined by the two consultants hired to conduct the review.

All Recommendations in 2015-116

Agency responses received are posted verbatim.