Increasing vulnerabilities in regions with rapid urbanization and extreme weather events have made DRMP’s Disaster Resilience and Sustainability Services more important than ever.

By integrating resilience and sustainability into our projects, DRMP aims to create projects that will generate cost savings and expedite service delivery throughout the lifespan of the infrastructure to benefit our clients, communities, and the environment. 

DRMP recognizes that resilience is connected to different aspects of our natural and built environments. The firm categorizes these connections into separate domains, each with detailed specializations that connect and overlap: Ecosystem Resilience, Infrastructure Resilience, Community Resilience, and Disaster Management.

DRMP is positioned to address the unique challenges in each of these domains. For more than 45 years, the firm has supported our clients in the Southeastern United States to prepare for extreme weather events and recover from their impacts. 

To support the fulfillment of DRMP’s resilience and sustainability mission, the firm has consolidated its grant writing capabilities into a structured platform that can deliver award-winning grants to assist clients and our partner firms in funding their disaster resilience and sustainable projects.

“The terms resilience and sustainability can be viewed in various ways depending on context,” said Josh Norman, DRMP Disaster Resilience and Sustainability Practice Leader. “For DRMP, resilience and sustainability means delivering critical infrastructure projects that can withstand shocks, adapt to changing conditions, and minimize environmental impacts.”

Road to Resilience

DRMP’s vision is to create a Resilience Value Chain for our clients that enhances focus, streamlines decision making, and reduces costs. By identifying our client’s existing capabilities, remediating known risks, and providing capacity for their resilience initiatives we present an opportunity to create scheduled achievements that generate momentum for their resilience program.

With DRMP as a trusted advisor to support the development, coordination, management, and delivery of a comprehensive resilience strategy, our clients will create a Resilience Value Chain that integrates resilience strategies and builds toward a vibrant, secure, and prosperous future for everyone in their community.

Our firm aims to provide the full life cycle of resilience services, from resilient and sustainable design and planning, to supporting project funding with full grant administration services across each of the domains of resilience.

“By participating in the planning, prioritization, and strategic funding of resilience-related projects, we will be prepared to deliver complete projects that leverage multiple funding streams and maximize project effectiveness in reducing risk,” Norman said.

DRMP’s approach will include integrating the firm’s technical skill groups of engineering and design; planning and grant writing; and management and operations into functional resilience teams that address unique challenges of each project.  

The integration of the firm’s comprehensive suite of services to address all our clients’ pre- and post-disaster resilience needs will achieve three critical value outcomes:

• Early identification of deficiencies in critical infrastructure and organizational capacity;
• Maximization of pre- and post-disaster funding opportunities to address deficiencies;
• Significant increase in response time and decrease in recovery time following a disaster.

Grant Funding Opportunities

DRMP has developed a grant management approach that can be applied across an array of grants and customized by agency and program. DRMP positions its clients for success by: 

-Using functional teams of local professionals familiar with the community and its infrastructure;

-Leveraging technical experts who are knowledgeable in the subject matter;

-Employing experienced grant writers who understand the awarding agency’s preferences.

“Our process for competitive and non-competitive grants, including post disaster grants, is straightforward and systematic so our grant teams can consistently deliver quality competitive grant applications and rapidly scale for large post disaster grant programs like the FEMA Public Assistance Program,” Norman said.  “This proven process identifies and addresses the standard requirements of a grant, from grant identification to grant development and all the way through grant close-out.”

Getting clients involved early in the funding process allows DRMP to support its clients by aligning projects with available programs, ranking those projects with eligibility and rating criteria, and adhering to pre-grant requirements. Plan synchronization is an important first step in identifying a comprehensive list of needs. Using comprehensive master plans, hazard mitigation plans, vulnerability assessments, resilience plans, and other mobility and transportation plans, DRMP layers our clients’ needs and desires in a structured view of prioritized projects.

DRMP’s approach to Disaster Resilience and Sustainability Services encompasses resilient and sustainable design, strategic planning, and expert grant administration across all aspects of resilience domains throughout the entire life cycle of projects. Our services aim to support clients with funding needs to ensure project success and thriving communities.