A group of charter school operators approached EKA with challenges they were experiencing navigating facility approvals for schools within a particular jurisdiction. EKA worked with this group to identify solutions to a complicated facility approval process for charter schools.

The process involved pinpointing stakeholders within the various agencies responsible for process approvals, educating them on charter schools and identifying legislative champions to support a one-stop shop for charter school facilities within the municipality. As a result of EKA’s public engagement, the municipality gained a greater understanding and a more positive perception of charter schools. Additionally, charter school operators were better equipped with a comprehensive understanding of timelines and procedures, which enabled them to meet other critical deadlines prior to the opening of the school year and avoid any potential loss of revenue from the state.

Shaping, Fashioning, Enhancing and Saving Reputations

Consumers rely on current customers to tell them whether an organization is worth their time and money. Consumers look at media reports, feedback from online reviews and social media to use in their decision-making process.  EKA has been trusted advisors to Fortune 500 companies and their CEO’s who face reputational challenges.  We have assisted in the shaping, fashioning, enhancing saving the reputations for clients in a wide variety of industries.

Protecting the reputation of private sector clients is essential as they pursue future public-sector work across the United States. Media stories that cast a client in a negative light can impact their ability to win future contracts in other markets. EKA worked with a large public works/civil engineering contractor to facilitate an amicable separation from a contract with a large construction agency in Los Angeles.

The agency wanted to terminate the client for convenience and consolidate two related contracts for a mega project under another contractor. EKA worked with the client, agency staff and elected officials to ensure that the staff report and public discussion of the termination did not blame the client and facilitated final payment for work already completed. As a result, potential litigation was avoided—which was a goal for both the client and agency. While local media coverage described potential schedule delays and cost overruns for the project, the client was not named or blamed. The outcome was positive for our client.

Understanding the needs and preferences of public agencies is essential to formulating a winning procurement strategy and crafting a proposal that is recommended by agency staff and ultimately approved. Also, it is essential that the client understand both the formal and informal decision-making processes as well as any political factors that may affect the procurement and approval process. EKA created and executed the right strategy for a Fortune 500 company to win a signature multi-year, multi-million-dollar service contract. Our work included advice and counsel on approach, communications and messaging. The strategy and tactics were successful.

EKA has provided similar strategic advice to other Fortune 500 companies as well as smaller businesses, enabling our clients to successfully navigate complex procurement processes for high-profile, high–dollar value services in many jurisdictions and agencies in Southern California.

At many public agencies, there are formal rules or informal practices prohibiting them from contracting with companies they are litigating. As a result, the cloud of litigation can prohibit a client from securing future work. This includes winning work through competitive procurement, contract options and extensions and assignment of task orders to companies on a services bench. Litigation also damages and usually precludes, a client’s ability to form joint ventures or serve in a subcontracting role on a larger team. Englander Knabe & Allen (collaborating with another consultant) worked with a client to resolve a legal dispute with a major public agency, ending the litigation and enabling the client to win new work.

The client also wanted to avoid negative media coverage and reputation damage, including any description of the allegations, which they vigorously disputed. The legal issue and underlying facts were highly complex and technical and did not lend themselves to clear messaging. And, if discussed publicly—were likely to cause agency leadership to defend its position.

Prior to EKA’s involvement, both sides were entrenched and previous settlement offers were rejected. EKA’s advice and counsel enabled corporate leadership to assess their options and likely outcomes and make an informed decision to settle the litigation in a way that was acceptable to both sides. While the settlement was announced at a public meeting (as required by law), there was no media coverage and the relationship between the client and agency management was restored. The client continues to work for the agency.

A notable hotel required substantial conversion done to an adaptive re-use office commercial building. The building was built in the 1970s, so most of the elements—including structural, Fire Life Safety, mechanical, plumbing, electrical and ADA code requirements—were out of code. The building could not be converted without simplification and modification of code because of excessive cost. In addition to the cost factor driven by onerous code requirements, the hotel needed to meet an opening date according to proforma and investors’ timelines.

EKA was retained by the major hotel developer to work with relevant city Agencies in coordination with their architect and GC team to review code requirements, explore and obtain modifications to code and ultimately open on time.

EKA arranged for a series of internal technical meetings with consultants—including architects, structural engineers, fire life safety consultants and the general contractor (which included mechanical, electrical and plumbing subcontractors)—to review building conversion plans. A strategic timeline was created as well as a list of elements of the building upgrade which did not meet current code in the disciplines above.

EKA facilitated significant cost savings ($2.5 million estimated) through the eight modifications obtained for the project and allowed for the client to meet their investors’ deadlines.

A well-known restaurant chain was in need of multiple location openings in the larger LA City and LA County areas, within a certain timeline.

EKA was retained by the restaurant chain to create and implement comprehensive outreach strategy inclusive of elected offices and community stakeholders. EKA also facilitated thorough plan check engineering and rough and final inspections to get all the restaurants approved and opened on time. This truly full-service scope is not offered by many firms.

We created a profile for each project site that included elected and relevant stakeholders and created a presentation and meeting strategy with possible restaurant layouts, operational conditions, etc. Some sites required a public hearing for a conditional-use permit dealing with drive-thrus. EKA represented those projects at all public hearings and community meetings and wrote and submitted all required documents. EKA continued to facilitate the client through various public hearing processes. Within two years, ten restaurants have been successfully opened in the larger LA City and LA County areas.

The elected and community support generated by EKA led to the approval of restaurant drive-thru requests, successful negotiation of operational conditions in the conditional-use permit and on-time opening of projects.