NOTICE TO CONSULTANT ENGINEERS

NOTICE TO CONSULTANT ENGINEERS

REGARDING A REQUEST FOR QUALIFICATIONS

The City of Cleveland, an Equal Opportunity, Affirmative Action Employer, seeks to retain the services of a professional consultant engineering firm to provide services related to visual stream assessment (VSA).  The City of Cleveland operates a regulated small Municipal Separate Storm Sewer System (MS4) and is obligated to satisfy certain water quality requirements of the Clean Water Act (CWA).

Required Scope of Services

Selected firm will perform visual stream assessment (VSA) using Stream Corridor Assessment (SCA) Survey Protocols published by the Watershed Restoration Division of Maryland Department of Natural Resources, September 2001 on stream segments with unavailable parameters for siltation, pathogens, and/or nutrients within the City’s jurisdiction: Bigsby Creek, Fillauer Branch, Little Chatata Creek, South Mouse Creek, Spring Branch, and Woolen Mill Branch. Work must be performed in accordance with the Cleveland Stormwater Option 2 Monitoring Plan. The option 2 monitoring plan includes an expanded VSA that will provide additional data for future stormwater program efforts and prioritize stream impairment sources. The VSA will be performed on stream segments with unavailable parameters for siltation, pathogens, and nutrients as opposed to the minimum requirements of performing the VSA only upstream and downstream of each MS4 outfall as listed in TDEC’s Option 1 Monitoring Plan. The VSA will document adverse physical alterations and point sources of pollution within the MS4 so that these issues can be addressed by the City and current BMPs can be evaluated for their effectiveness.

The VSA will include the following elements:

• Channel alteration
• Erosion sites
• Exposed pipes
• Pipe outfalls
• Tributaries
• Fish barriers
• Inadequate buffer
• In/near stream construction
• Trash dumping
• Unusual condition or comment, and
• Representative site (documentation of the in-stream habitat and the condition of the adjacent stream corridor, approximately every 0.25 miles for urban streams).

The VSA will be performed during low-flow conditions.   Crews will be equipped with a GPS data logger and field book to record information not collectable through the data logger.  Field crews must be trained in the use of SCA and field equipment.

Firm will prepare a report that consists of a brief description of the areas surveyed, a map showing these locations, photographs, and an ArcGIS Pro database download of information collected during the VSA/outfall locating.  The report will provide the City with an efficient means of locating areas of concern and potential restoration reaches.

Estimated Schedule for Project Completion:

May 2026

Firms may request consideration by submitting their statement of qualifications to Kristi Powers at For security reasons, you must enable JavaScript to view this E-mail address.. All statements of qualifications must be received by The City of Cleveland on or before July 2, 2025, at 3:00 p.m., EST. The SOQ shall indicate the scope of services to be completed by any sub-consultants. The method of payment will be lump sum.

Evaluation

SOQ’s submitted by the deadline will be reviewed and evaluated on the following criteria (relative weight):

1. Workload capacity, to include current work under contract (15%)
2. Past performance on the City of Cleveland or Similar Sized City projects (15%)
3. Experience and Qualifications of the firm specific to visual stream assessments (50%)
4. Evidence that the Firms experience derives from projectS that are comparable or larger in size to that expected in this Contract (20%)

The consultant evaluation committee holds the ability to conduct interviews based on scoring as Phase II Evaluation, if required.   However, the City of Cleveland reserves the right to make a selection based solely on statement of qualifications received.

Any documents submitted to the City of Cleveland in response to this Request for Qualifications are considered public record and will be open to inspection by the any member of the public.

The City of Cleveland encourages minority and female owned businesses to submit qualifications on all City of Cleveland projects.

Evaluation proceedings will be conducted within the established guidelines regarding equal employment opportunity and nondiscriminatory action based upon the grounds of race, color, sex, creed or national origin.  Interested certified Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) firms as well as other minority-owned and women-owned firms are encouraged to respond to all advertisements by The City of Cleveland.