RCC Consultants talks funding, grant management at APCO
At the RCC Consultants booth at the APCO national conference in Nashville, Tenn., yesterday, Terry Wright, the company’s vice president of sales and marketing, said that more than half of RCC’s business is public safety.
“We’ve been doing public safety sector consulting since 1983. We have a large client contingency here,” Wright said.
He said that visitors to the RCC booth have showed an interest in new communications capabilities for emergency operations centers as a result of the terrorism threat.
“They’re interested in all manner of public safety communications and technology in the industry from radio system to CAD and mobile data to records management,” he said.
Wright said that he had been pleasantly surprised about the amount of procurement opportunities from local and state agencies. He said purchasing has been steady during the past two years despite what he described as the valid claims about reduced income from taxes and budget cuts.
“Government agencies are still spending on critical infrastructure. And the federal government is releasing the largest first responder grant assistance in history as part of the homeland security grant funds expected to be available after Oct. 1 to the states through FEMA. They have a formula to distribute funds to the states based on population, and the states administer the funds from there,” Wright said.
Wright said that RCC is regarded as the most complete public safety communications and consulting engineering firm. He said that the company tries to add value to its clients’ projects by establishing their requirements and developing a set of specifications to create the greatest possible competition from vendors to get the best value for their dollar. RCC also helps with implementation so installations are on time and within budget.
RCC can help agencies to identify grant sources.
“Depending on the type of project, we can help to find the right grant program whether federal or private. We can prepare grant applications and manage the grant,” Wright said.
The importance of grant management is underscored by the need to fulfill reporting requirements that document to the grantor that the money was spent as intended.
“We’ve seen horror stories where an agency accepts money and implements the project as intended but doesn’t report properly, and the grant agency wants the money back,” Wright said.
