General Info:
Process and Productivity Improvement: Since 1972, GRA has provided highly regarded economic analysis to organizations in the public and private sectors of the transportation industry. This analysis directly addresses issues related to the efficiency and effectiveness of existing and anticipated work programs and processes. Such analysis can be of special value for organizations in the public sector, since these organizations normally have responsibilities and objectives that are not necessarily related to the "bottom line" economic objectives of private sector organizations. Performance Measures and Indicators: Due to the strategic importance of many federal agency activities, it is important to identify both the effects and the effectiveness of these activities as completely as possible. GRA has extensive experience in working through the process whereby federal agency activities have impacts on the economy and the broader society, and is able to present decision makers with reliable options and/or recommendations for possible courses of action. Program Audits, and Evaluations: Federal agencies often face choices among potential projects, and choices about the timing of expenditures and related aspects of projects after they are implemented. GRA can provide consulting services in these areas that are regarded, on a national level, as being of the highest quality and reliability. Benefit-cost analysis (BCA) allows comparison of the social benefits of particular projects with the total costs, direct and indirect, that are associated with completing and implementing the project. It is also possible to include measures of uncertainty within a benefit-cost analysis. This perspective will improve the ability of agency decision makers to evaluate and compare the value of alternative projects--an important capability in times of increasing pressures on agency budgets. A related area of GRA expertise concerns ROI analysis, which expresses the value to society of alternative investment projects in terms familiar to decision makers in both the public and private sectors. Strategic, Business and Action Planning: GRA advises public sector enterprises in strategic and business issues. The firm combines practitioners (who are personally familiar with operations) with economic and operations research capabilities to build enterprise models. These models incorporate detailed information on alternative operations regimes and their economic and financial consequences. Such models are particularly useful in reorganizing public enterprises as well as for anticipating the consequences of alternative funding mechanisms. SIN 874-3 Survey Services GRA, Incorporated will provide complete survey services, including the following components: Planning Survey Design: An effective survey must be preceded by several preparatory steps, including the design of the survey. At GRA, the initial survey design considerations will include the most precise possible statement of the goal of the survey effort. Sampling and Survey Development: After concluding the initial stages of the survey design process, GRA begins planning to actually conduct the survey. Relevant considerations at this stage include planning for the appropriate survey size--How large should the sample be?--and how extensive, complex, or time consuming should the survey questionnaire be--How much should be demanded of survey respondents? Careful consideration of these issues is necessary to ensure the reliability of the eventual survey, which will be related both to the sample size and to the care with which the persons or entities in the sample treat their survey response. Pilot Surveying/Survey Pretesting: Pretesting is an important technique for gauging and calibrating the effectiveness of a survey instrument, especially if the cost of administering and recording the survey is relatively low, and if the population from which the survey will sample is relatively large. By examining the outcome fr