That the City Council:
A. Approve and authorize the City Manager to enter into an agreement with AGA Engineers, Inc., of Fullerton, California, in the annual amount of $85,000 to provide professional consultant traffic and transportation engineering services for the City of La Habra Fiscal Year 2021-2022 through Fiscal Year 2026-2027; and authorize staff to issue an annual purchase order to AGA Engineers, Inc., for Fiscal Year 2021-2022 through 2026-2027 in the amount of $85,000; and

B. Approve and authorize the City Manager to enter into an agreement with ADVANTEC CONSULTING ENGINEERS, Inc., of Irvine, California, in the annual amount of $25,000 to provide professional consultant traffic and transportation engineering services for the City of La Habra Fiscal Year 2021-2022 through Fiscal Year 2026-2027; and authorize staff to issue an annual purchase order to ADVANTEC CONSULTING ENGINEERS, Inc., for Fiscal Year 2021-2022 through 2026-2027 in the amount of $25,000.

In May 2021 staff issued a Request for Proposal (RFP) for the provision of professional traffic and transportation engineering services for the City of La Habra for Fiscal Year 2021-2022 through 2026-2027.  These services are intended to assist City staff in traffic and transportation engineering, transportation planning, development planning and engineering, and plan check services. The RFP was sent to six (6) qualified consulting firms:  ADVANTEC CONSULTING ENGINEERS, Inc., AGA Engineers, Inc., Econolite, Iteris, KOA Corporation, and Linscott, Law & Greenspan, Engineers. Staff received five (5) proposals in response to the RFP from the following consulting firms: ADVANTEC CONSULTING ENGINEERS, Inc., AGA Engineers, Inc., Econolite, KOA Corporation, and Linscott, Law & Greenspan, Engineers.  Iteris declined to submit a proposal due to lack of available staff and the required timeline for this work.

The bids from the RFP respondents are as follows: 
 

* The proposal fee is calculated by taking the hourly rate of the project manager (as provided in the proposal) and then multiplying by the 36 hours (monthly) as specified in the RFP and then multiplying by 12 months (for a full year).

A review committee consisting of the Public Works Director, the City Engineer, and the Traffic Manager evaluated the proposals.  The review committee determined that AGA Engineers, Inc. (AGA) and ADVANTEC CONSULTING ENGINEERS, Inc. (ADVANTEC) were the most qualified to meet the City's needs.  AGA and ADVANTEC submitted a comprehensive proposal and assembled a project team with extensive experience providing on-call traffic and transportation engineering services.  The review committee determined that both firms have the knowledge, skills, understanding, and recent experience to provide the City with on-call traffic and transportation engineering services in a timely manner.

California Government Code Section 4526-4529 requires that the selection of professional services "shall be on the basis of demonstrated competence and on the professional qualifications necessary for the satisfactory performance of the services required." When the selection process was concluded, it was observed that AGA had already included reduced rates to match existing rates from a prior agreement with the City of La Habra.  Staff then commenced negotiations with ADVANTEC and was able to negotiate a reduction in the fee proposal to $92,880, a difference of $6,480 or 6.5%.  Furthermore, staff negotiated a reduction of the hourly rate on all classifications with a range between 5-9%.  It is important to note that while ADVANTEC'S bid is for an entire year of service, their agreement with the City will be in a "not to exceed" amount of $25,000.

Having two on-call professional consultants for traffic and transportation engineering will allow staff to have more flexibility which in turn will benefit the City by decreasing turn-around times for plan checks, increasing customer services, and increase response times to concerns from residents.

Staff has provided for funds in the Fiscal Year 2021-2022 Traffic Management Budget for these services.  The funding for these services is from the General Fund.  There are sufficient funds available to cover the costs for providing these professional services. The cost of future year consulting services through the term of these agreements will be included in future proposed annual budgets.