Wyoming Broadband Office walks awardees through UNA milestone‑1 submissions, EHP rules and July reporting deadlines

Chad Bowling, broadband manager at the Wyoming Business Council, opened a webinar for NTIA-funded broadband awardees and said staff would walk recipients through Milestone 1 submission and UNA’s EHP reporting features. He introduced staff from the Wyoming Broadband Office who led a live demo and a question-and-answer session.

Vince, the UNA grant-management expert on staff, demonstrated account setup and the award page inside UNA, saying attendees should expect to receive an onboarding email (from no-reply@gotomygrants.com) and to land on a calendar view that displays tasks and due dates. “That milestone is 5% of your total award,” Vince said as he showed the demo award’s budget tab, noting the figure was used as an example during the demonstration.

Vince walked participants step‑by‑step through creating a milestone disbursement (payment) request: create the payment request under Cash Flow → Payment Requests, select the milestone category and line item, enter the direct cost as the grant-funded amount plus any expended match, set the expense date, and attach required supporting files. He advised applicants to upload individual files (not a zip), validate the financial table, and be careful before clicking Submit because submissions are locked from further edits once sent to the Broadband Office.

Staff emphasized how to report match. Vince and Mitch Herget explained that match is calculated proportionally to the drawdown (not necessarily to actual incurred costs) and that applicants should break out cash and in‑kind match in the financial details; the demo used a $5,000 grant-funded example with $1,000 of match totaling $6,000 to show the mechanics. Mitch cautioned that if match is below the required proportion at the time of a payment request, the Broadband Office will scrutinize the submission and may issue a rejection for curing that requires correction and resubmission.

On environmental and EHP rules, staff told awardees that the EHP submission form in UNA is the authoritative internal record and that the public EHP questionnaire linked on the website is distinct. A participant noted that the EHP form inside UNA is limited to one submission per award. Mitch reiterated a key caveat for construction-related milestones: “No milestones for any ground‑disturbing activities can be requested or even really initiated until you have your environmental approval,” and staff said they will not process ground‑disturbing milestone requests absent EHP clearance.

Staff also reviewed reporting cadence. WBO confirmed that awardees will file both a quarterly report to the Wyoming Broadband Office and a separate semiannual report (SAR) aggregated for the federal government; staff said those reports will be due July 14 and that additional guidance from NTIA had been shared earlier. Because funds had not yet been dispersed at the time of the webinar, staff described the first round of SAR/quarterly filings as a lighter “warm-up,” with fuller reporting expected once draws occur.

Throughout the session Vince demonstrated UNA workflows for adding users, managing permissions, creating payment requests, attaching documents, and saving drafts of EHP or quarterly reports for later editing. He showed the reject-for-curing workflow: the Broadband Office will return a rejected payment request with notes; applicants can edit and resubmit after addressing the identified issues.

The Broadband Office closed by saying the recorded webinar and supplemental resources would be posted to the Wyoming Business Council website and urged awardees to contact WBO staff directly with any follow‑up questions. The session included live Q&A in which staff confirmed budget fields in UNA are pre‑populated from each award contract, explained match proportionality, and reminded applicants of the environmental‑approval requirement before requesting ground‑disturbing milestone payments.

Next steps: awardees should confirm their lead contact has UNA access, add users as needed, review the program guide and upload templates, prepare Milestone‑1 attachments and the EHP submission inside UNA, and watch for the July 14 reporting deadline. WBO said staff are available to help resolve curing items and to assist with UNA navigation.