Orizon to support HUD databases

Department of Housing and Urban Development

Department of Housing and Urban Development officials recently awarded Orizon Inc. a two-year, $2.5 million sole-source contract to provide maintenance and development support for a multifamily housing enterprise database.

Michael McLean, executive vice president of the company based in Rockville, Md., said Orizon will provide database management and release management for HUD's Multifamily Housing Integration project. Release management is overseeing and administering the process of releasing new software

The work also involves the Housing Enterprise Real Estate Management System (HEREMS) database, which provides information to support various functions involving multifamily programs, such as enforcement activities and real estate assessment.

Orizon officials will coordinate with other multifamily maintenance and development teams, providing different software releases and implementing database changes, McLean said.

The real estate management system is "the overarching system or database of record for all real estate management at the Department of Housing and Urban Development," McLean said. "We're going to be tying into the different systems that actually tie into the HEREMS database."

John Novotny, project manager with Orizon, said many applications connect to HEREMS.

"Orizon is acting as a coordinator to make sure that any application that warrants maintenance or development change to the database doesn't affect any other application that's used," he said.

Orizon officials, who began work Oct. 1, are working with Advanced Technology Systems Inc., which previously held the contract.

In related news, Orizon won a sole-source $150,000 task order to conduct a risk assessment analysis of the operational platform for HUD's Loss Mitigation Program, which helps homeowners work with lenders to find ways to avoid foreclosure.

Novotny said Orizon officials will analyze data and make correlations and comparisons with other types of loss mitigation strategies in use at other agencies.

"The idea is to come up with ways to ensure the lenders can do everything they can possibly do to make sure mortgagees stay in a particular property or maybe refinance or something if there's a financial problem or come up with different ways of helping the holders of the mortgage stay in a particular property," Novotny said.

He said this will involve using sophisticated products to analyze the data. Eventually, HUD officials will probably take the results of the loss mitigation study and develop a series of programs "to analyze the data and come up with a ranking, if you will, of who is doing the best job and keeping the mortgagees in the properties and not letting them default on loans," Novotny said.