We conducted this audit to determine the status of past audit recommendations as they relate to the City’s current work on the Portland Building. This audit is a follow-up to 2016 report, Portland Building Reconstruction: City faced with important post-planning decisions to ensure project success, and covers a fieldwork period ending December 31, 2018.

To accomplish this audit objective, we:

• Began by gaining an understanding of the Portland Building activities that occurred since our last audit period ended in July 2016.

• Reviewed relevant City Council, Historic Landmarks Commission, and Portland Building Oversight Committee records; contract changes; status reports (for example audit recommendation, construction, equity, financial); project management records; and communication updates.

• Interviewed City project staff, observed project management meetings, conducted a construction site visit in October 2018, and performed walkthroughs of key project controls.

• Compiled available information about known and anticipated side projects, communicated with subject matter experts inside and outside of the City, and reviewed records for community benefits-related activities.

We relied on management’s representations about information provided and, whenever possible, sought corroboration from other sources and evaluated against our knowledge of operations. We requested supporting documentation and, if available, reviewed this information for reasonableness. As part of our work, we raised reliability questions about the equity status reports that we disclosed to City management. Therefore, our reviews are not intended to provide assurance that information provided by management is free from error, fraud, waste or abuse.

We conducted this performance audit in accordance with generally accepted auditing standards. Those standards require that we plan and perform the audit to obtain sufficient, appropriate evidence to provide a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives. We believe that the evidence obtained provides a reasonable basis for our findings and conclusions based on our audit objectives.