Cabezon Group aids FEMA in Grant Review Process

Cabezon Group provides grant management support to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) for the Assistance to Firefighters Grant (AFG) Program. The AFG Program consists of four separate grants, one of which is the Fire Prevention and Safety Grants (FP&S).

Cabezon Group recently assisted in the coordination and execution of the peer review technical evaluations for the Fire Prevention and Safety Grants.

For the first time in the grant program’s eight-year history, technical evaluations were conducted outside of the National Emergency Training Center (NETC) in Emmittsburg, MD. Due to the change of venue, tight timelines resulted. Our staff worked quickly to transition operations to a new venue. We worked with hotel management to ensure the requirements of the 175 technical evaluators were met during the review sessions. Our staff coordinated with the hotel management to setup the technical evaluation room, banquet meals, data processing rooms and the application file storage room. Using our proprietary Web-based technical reviewer tracking system we were able to provide required information quickly and accurately to the hotel staff.

Prior to arriving at the evaluations, technical reviewers completed an online orientation tutorial. The interactive tutorial provided evaluators with grant-specific training requirements and reviewed the grant’s program guidance information in detail. Cabezon Group worked with a team of subject matter specialists and our in-house e-learning development staff to produce the interactive orientation.

Approximately 2,450 grant applications were reviewed during five days of evaluations. Cabezon Group utilized a proprietary Web-based grant scoring system to track scores and status of applications being evaluated. Scores were entered in real-time allowing program staff the ability to see scoring trends. Onsite subject matter expert reviews were also conducted using the grant scoring system to record their evaluations.

The technical evaluations were completed as scheduled allowing program staff to transition into the next stage of the grant review cycle.