Page 170 - SAC - DPW - AMB 09 05 19

Mohammad Ali

Wednesday, August 28, 2019 11:04 AM

Why are you interested in the Director of Public Works position with the City of Sacramento?
Tell me a bit about what you know about the City.

I don't know much about the City. I have been working with a public agency for 17 years. I am very
familiar with County organizations as well as with the City of Fresno. I am not that familiar with the City of
Sacramento government. I don't know if it is led by Council or Mayor. Those items I really don't know
much. Why I'm interested, I'm not actively looking for a new job, I'm really interested in leading a Public
Works department. I am really interested in specific areas like Sacramento.

Please describe your most recent position and day-to-day responsibilities.

My most recent position is as a division manager in the Public Works Department with Fresno County. I
manage the Design Division. We have more than 100 active projects in my department and division we
put five bridge projects to construction this summer. My division is very active in designing and putting a
project out to bid. We have a transportation planning department. I think Fresno County is the 2nd
county in California in terms of special districts. We design them, do their opening, we also maintain the
right away and real property section in the county. My division is responsible for property acquisition. If
you want to sell the land, all the real property transactions are done in my division. I am quite familiar
with what is needed for real property needs. I have a team of about 40 people and half of them are
engineers. They design projects. We design roads, any type of public projects, basically. We manage
projects for the library and for the Sheriff. Any project in the County is being managed by my division.

Please describe a project in which you played a major role in creating pathways for
improvement for those in your community.

I was given a task of designing the expansion of Phase 3 for American Avenue landfill. Taking the lead
on designing new modules and new collection system - it was very eye-opening for me to see how
complicated and how complex some of these other types of projects like a landfill project is. I was
directly involved in the design of them.
Please describe your experience in evaluating innovation and operational procedure utilized
in a City department and your approach to staying at the forefront of industry.
My division went through a restructuring over a year ago. I lost about 16 of my engineers out of 20 to
CalTrans. CalTrans is very active in hiring engineers in Central Valley. Because our operation is similar
they hired many of our engineers. There is a big compensation gap. I had to restructure our whole
operation and procedure to address the needs. We added a lot of engineers that were green with no
design experience. What I did is I made agreements with our consultants to augment our staff and I was
able to bring in engineers to mentor. Now we are supporting more projects than the year before. We
were able to address our needs and restructure our function to address those needs. Those are some of
the skills as an engineer and a problem solver that I have been able to develop to address our
operational needs.

Please describe your experience in the areas of public transportation and traffic reduction.

I'm very active in our region council of governments. I am on the transpiration commission. Active
transportation and street redesigns is something that is becoming very popular. In the County we don't
facilitate those types of projects. All the roads are mainly in rural areas so our transportation needs are
not the same as the City of Fresno or Sacramento, but I am very familiar with the transportation needs of
an urban community. Almost 80% of our needs in the County are federally funded. I am quite familiar
with our funding programs.