Repairing the physical damage to the New Orleans Hurricane Storm Damage Risk Reduction System in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina is a multi-year, multi-billion dollar undertaking by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Since 2006, we have provided multi-disciplinary planning, program and project management services to help the Corps manage this massive effort to reinforce, rebuild or replace floodwalls, levees, canals, pump stations and related structures.

The process began with development of a comprehensive integrated master schedule to provide overall direction and support. We helped the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to integrate individual schedules for more than 250 projects with 16,000 interlinked activities and the overall rebuilding plan, allowing the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to visualise impacts of overlapping and multiple priorities and plan work accordingly. We used our expertise in decision economics to provide detailed reports on risk and market analysis using a Monte Carlo simulation that simultaneously varied unit prices against quantities, schedules and durations and project risks to identify potential risks to project completion. This supplemental economic input marked the first time the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers integrated an estimate with a sound market and risk analysis to develop a defensible budget estimate, with event risks tied to specific schedule activities.