MAKING GOOD IDEAS WORK FOR THE BETTER

Efficiency

Policy

Strategy

Creativity

Values

Results

Consultant tells Baltimore County how to save hundreds of millions of dollars.

You won’t often see a headline like that, but taxpayers in Baltimore County, Maryland, did recently when Public Works completed efficiency reviews of both the Baltimore County Government and Public Schools. Both reports were widely hailed produced recommendations reaching our by-now-standard savings of 5% in operating costs.

Using Data to Help Des Moines Identify and Reduce Racial Bias

The City of Des Moines, Iowa, retained Public Works to study best-practices in data collection and analysis of policing, as well as housing code enforcement, practices nationwide. We produced two reports, totaling over 300 pages, on the current and ideal states of data collection and steps the City could take to move to data-informed law and code enforcement decision-making.

272 Million in Cost-Cutting Options to Avert Layoffs in Chicago

With the City of Chicago suffering—like most jurisdictions—from a severe COVID-related budget shortfall, Public Works was brought back for the third time in ten years to find savings and efficiencies to close the gap.
Our plan was praised in the media and helped lead to a resolution of the impasse without loss of jobs.

Dubuque’s Equitable Poverty Prevention Plan

We spent a year helping the City of Dubuque, Iowa, to develop an Equitable Poverty Prevention Plan publicly unveiled and adopted in January 2021.
It is a model for how to get transportation, housing, education, job training, social services, businesses, and foundations all working together to improve families’ quality of life.

Los Angeles County Redesigns Welfare-to-Work

When one of the nation’s largest counties wanted to redesign the programs for its hardest-to-employ residents using Human-Centered Design, it hired Public Works. Our charge: cut the focus on meeting requirements; change the focus to getting people jobs. Our recommendations: change the County’s intake procedures, focus on a jobs-first strategy, but fund continuing training and education for all program participants even after they’re employed, and build on-going custom-tailored job-training programs in target industries like logistics.

What Is the Future of Health Care Jobs?

We worked with the nation’s largest health care union to study the future of health care and its implications for the workforce. Our final report conveys the research findings, analysis, proceedings, and recommendations of the Healthcare Technology Workgroup that includes a user-friendly explanation of the Fourth Industrial Revolution, a forecast on job replacement, augmentation, and creation related to emerging technologies, and infographics on skills and training needs of future jobs.

Designing a New School System for the Hopi Tribe

The Hopi Tribe asked us to help design a new school system for their K–12 village schools is perhaps the most isolated area of the continental United States. A big part of the assignment was helping the Hopi to find the right balance between preparing students to succeed in the challenges of a 21st Century world while at the same time preserving the distinctive Hopi values, culture, religion, and even language in the face of the very same challenges. This, of course, is in many ways the same problem facing rural communities across America.

National School Boards Association Chooses Public Works to Create Nationwide School Efficiency Program

Due to our work with school districts across the country on improving efficiency and program effectiveness, the National School Boards Association has entered into an exclusive arrangement with Public Works to create the Elevated Solutions project, which will bring our expertise to NSBA’s 55,000 member districts.

With budgets growing tighter across the country and schools everywhere needing to reassess their educational programs for a new day, every school needs Elevated Solutions like those provided.