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commitments and fulfilling customer expectations, and makes it a lot easier to explain and defend what we are doing. Thus, if there is federal interest and local financial support, the PMP defines the tasks and associated costs that the federal government and local sponsors will be supporting financially. In this role, the PMP defines a contract between the Corps and local sponsors, and reflects the "buy in" on the part of local financial backers, as well as those who will be performing the activities involved in the feasibility study. The PMP serves to outline the work activities that are necessary to perform various planning steps as well as to estimate the time and cost that will be required to move among the steps. Thus, the PMP is the "plan for the planning process". THE PMP IS USED THROUGHOUT THE CORPS' PLANNING PROCESS The "Principles and Guidelines" (Water Resources Council, 1983) are the centerpiece of Corps planning guidance, and enumerate asix-step planning process - a conceptual sequence -for determining the feasibility of alternative project plans. The six steps follow a logical order, beginning with identifying problems and opportunities through formulation of alternative plans that may reduce problems or exploit opportunities, to comparison and eventual selection of a recommended plan that is considered to be in the federal interest. From a temporal standpoint, the development of the PSP occurs at the end of the reconnaissance study phase, which is the first phase of a several-phase overall process (reconn-feasibility-implementation-operation). The products of the reconnaissance phase include a preliminary report (commonly referred to as a "905b report" by the Corps) - it is essentially an assessment of three things: the technical situation; the local willingness and ability to sponsor a feasibility phase of the planning process; and the federal interest in such feasibility study work. We have previously distributed the 905b for the Metro Waterways GI. The other major product of the reconnaissance phase is the cost-sharing agreement described above in the overview -including the PMP as its attachment. Once the decision has been made to begin the feasibility phase of the study, one makes use of the knowledge gained during the reconnaissance to proceed with necessary analyses, formulation, and evaluation of economically and environmentally feasible plans. The PMP is the mechanism through which knowledge gained during reconnaissance gets translated into the feasibility phase of study. Although the PMP is only a small component of the overall six-step planning process, and is developed and activated relatively early on in the planning process, it should be recognized that a good PMP can and usually does bring about an efficient and successful feasibility study. That in turn generally translates into higher quality solutions for our waterway problems and opportunities. So the PMP is an important driver.