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Making Cities Work

Created Nov 18 2014, 3:38 PM by Chuck Billand

USAID Washington recently awarded a worldwide Indefinite Quantities Contract (IQC) titled Making Cities Work. The Making Cities Work contract will award $650 million over a five-year period beginning in 2014. The goal of Making Cities Work is to provide access to short- and long-term technical services, training, and capacity building related to improving urban and local governance in the following five functional areas:

1. Improved urban and local government public service delivery with an emphasis
on transportation, water and sanitation;
2. Improved autonomy, transparency, responsiveness and accountability of urban
and local governments;
3. Enhanced ability of urban and local governments to adapt to climate change,
improve environmental management practices and pollution control systems;
4. Improved urban and local government disaster preparedness, response and
recovery; and
5. Improved urban and local government finance, creditworthiness and borrowing.

USAID Country Missions drive the origination of technical assistance, training and capacity building projects. Annually each USAID Missions develops its sector goals and objectives based upon an adopted country strategy that is crafted collaboratively with the host country government. The Making Cities Work IQC contract will be a tool available to Missions to support their country strategies and sector goals and objectives.

The World Bank Group and its partners are pursuing the City Creditworthiness Initiative (CCI), which will plan, finance, develop, build and operate climate change adaptation and mitigation projects in 300 cities. The CCI helps cities identify their technical assistance, training and capacity building needs through an intensive self-assessment process, which forms the core of a weeklong Academy. The process is country focused.

One example is the recent Academy held in Tanzania, where 34 local governments met to categorize the requirements needed to develop climate change projects. The outcome was the preparation of terms of reference to procure support for their efforts. With the support of the USAID Tanzania Mission the Making Cities Work project can provide some share of the qualified expertise that is necessary.

In October 2014 USAID awarded five-year IQC contracts to the following firms:

Tetra Tech ARD
Deloitte Consulting, LLP
AECOM International
Development Alternatives, Inc
Chemonics International
RTI International
Louis Berger Group
International Resources Group
SEGURA
ECODIT
Development Innovations Group

Making Cities Work

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