Using technology to streamline Pierce County’s funding strategy

The Surface Water Management Division in Pierce County, Washington State, helps reduce flood damage and protect and improve water quality and natural resources for its communities.

Challenge

Pierce County’s Surface Water Management (SWM) Division, part of the Planning and Public Works Department, was under mounting pressure to address flood mitigation and habitat restoration. The County’s elected officials and internal leadership wanted to pursue federal and state funding opportunities through the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (BIL) and the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA).

With a significant presence of tribal communities, disadvantaged communities, Community Disaster Resilience Zones, and unique geological features, Pierce County SWM has a diverse set of challenges and opportunities for risk reduction and natural resource protection. However, the abundance of available grants and the complexity of funding processes can be overwhelming and time-consuming to understand, and many grant application deadlines come and go with limited visibility, which hindered SWM’s ability to tap into these valuable resources. They sought guidance from ICF’s resilience, environment, grants management, and technology experts to take advantage of the newly available sources of federal funding opportunities—aligning the division’s prioritized projects to available grant programs and building a multi-year plan for pursing, capturing, and implementing those grants.

Solution

We brought together a team experienced in grant funding strategy development, hazard mitigation, habitat restoration, and cloud-based technology to build a system to identify grant funding opportunities. Using ICF’s proprietary grantTRAX technology platform allows Pierce County to streamline their progress reporting to leadership on grant pursuits and success, to justify why they chose to pursue or not pursue a grant, and to build a milestone schedule that conforms to both internal and external deadlines. Moreover, grantTRAX allows the County to calculate return on investment for applying for grants based on resources required to develop the grant application compared to the amount of funding awarded.

Given SWM’s focus on flood mitigation and habitat restoration, we strategically prioritized funding opportunities and projects with those in mind. Our technology served as a comprehensive database, consolidating information on federal and state grant programs related to these priorities. This included details such as timelines, funding amounts, and objectives for each grant. Next, we reviewed the division’s strategic planning documents and capital improvement plans to develop a detailed database of 45 unique projects valued at over $373 million in project costs. Combining this project information with our programmatic knowledge of infrastructure, environmental, and climate resilience grant programs, we were able to link funding opportunities from the grants database to SWM projects by analyzing the project’s eligibility and competitiveness.

Additionally, grantTRAX automatically builds an internal and external milestone schedule for each grant opportunity. Having visibility into these milestones and deadlines catalyzes internal discussions and coordination about grant opportunities so that there is sufficient time for application development. The culmination of the funding strategy was the custom dashboard, which displays a clean, user-friendly interface of all grant applications the County is pursuing, developing, and submitting, as well as the specific workflow status for any application. In August 2023, ICF delivered an in-person training to Pierce County on the grantTRAX platform.

Where we are now

The digital funding strategy built on grantTRAX has helped the County reduce administrative overhead and spend less time navigating complex grant requirements. They’ll continue to use this funding system to secure funding that improves infrastructure, safety, and quality of life for residents. Since the creation of their custom grantTRAX system, Pierce County was able to identify multiple grant applications to pursue, including the state-level Floodplains by Design (FbD) Grant Program for their Clear Creek Floodplain Reconnection Project that focuses on near-term floodplain reconnection measures in Clear Creek. This project is in the final cycle of review, approval, and award. Additionally, Pierce County was recently awarded under the National Coastal Resilience Fund for $1.9 million for their Swan Creek Channel Restoration Project, another project identified in the funding strategy. This funding will help the County restore 2.5 miles of stream channel and associated riparian buffer along Swan Creek.

Our collaboration with Pierce County is just beginning, and we look forward to supporting the county in implementing this solution across the entire Planning and Public Works Department (PPW), which covers 10 divisions with diverse needs and priorities. Our ultimate goal is to create a centralized hub for all grant funding information, enabling department-wide reporting. By expanding this system, we aim to enhance collaboration, visibility, transparency, and internal partnership among PPW divisions. Divisions will be able to utilize the funding strategy dashboard to identify joint grant opportunities and achieve multiple benefits in a single grant application.