Consultant Services, Seattle WA
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1.1. Project Purpose:
The Washington Chapter of The Nature Conservancy (“Conservancy”) is seeking qualifications from qualified consultants to facilitate the Floodplains by Design (FbD) leadership meetings and support an organizational transition to a more collaborative and sustainable leadership model as outlined in the 5-Year Strategy for Washington’s Floodplains.
Floodplains by Design is an ambitious public-private partnership focused on integrating and accelerating efforts to reduce flood risks and restore habitat across Washington State’s major river corridors. Historically, floodplains have been managed in a fragmented, non-collaborative way, driving up costs, and nullifying intended benefits to both ecosystems and communities. The result has been ever increasing flood risks and the continued decline of salmon runs and water quality.
Floodplains by Design strives to align state and federal investments with locally-driven solutions that solve multiple floodplain management challenges and create a more sustainable future for people and nature. The partnership’s goal is to improve the resiliency of floodplains for the protection of human communities and the health of the ecosystem, while supporting values important in the state such as salmon and orca recovery, agriculture, a vibrant economy and outdoor recreation.
The Floodplains by Design initiative was started in 2013 as a broad-based partnership led by The Nature Conservancy (TNC), the Department of Ecology (Ecology), and the Puget Sound Partnership (PSP). TNC has served as the backbone organization, providing overall facilitation and leadership to the statewide effort. Ecology has administered the FbD grant program and provided staff time to contribute to the FbD effort. TNC, Ecology, and PSP have served as the Management Team for the FbD initiative.
The first five years of Floodplains by Design (2013-2017) were focused on proving a new model: a collaborative, integrated approach to river management toward significantly accelerating efforts to reduce flood risk and restore rivers. The Floodplains by Design approach includes a three-part Strategy:
1) Practitioner Learning Network: Growing a community of floodplain practitioners including facilitating learning exchanges and workshops; developing and deploying know-how for complex, integrated capital projects; loaning expertise as technical support for high-risk, high reward capital projects; solving for chronic challenges that are driving up project costs supporting multi-stakeholder planning in river basins. Grounded in the principles of generative networking.
2) Leveraged Funding: Grant program developed to target funding at the most innovative, collaborative floodplains projects; Public sector grant program refinement toward higher impact, state-wide; Positioning State funding for successful match from other sources
3) Storytelling & Advocacy: Case stories that break the mold, paired with rigorous research; field tours, and other gatherings that raise the profile of integrated floodplain management as a new approach getting results in the field; Getting best available science into the hands of practitioners and decision makers; Communicating the vision of integrated floodplain management.
