Please stand by for realtime captions. Please stand by for realtime captions.
Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by and welcome to the project bundling key characteristics of lead agencies. If you require assistance during the call please press *0 and I will turn over to your host Dan D'Angelo.
Thank you and welcome to the second in the series of project bundling webinars. I am glad you can join us. I will switch over to some poll questions while we are waiting for people to login. It is concerns you have and how we can help you in the will start very shortly.
Thank you for answering the poll question. For those joining us please answering these questions and we are looking for some insight on any challenges or difficulties you have with implementing the project and what help we can provide in solving these issues. It would be helpful for the team. Another minute or so and then we will jump to the presentation. Just looking at some of these results and it is encouraging to see several agencies have processes in place. It is also very encouraging. A lot of different project work types across the board that have been used by different agencies for project bundling. Another minute on the poll and then we will jump to the presentation. Looking at the challenges for the smaller contractors and enterprises. Those are definitely concerns the we can talk about them during the presentation and how project bundling can help in some of those situations.
We will bring the poll back at the end if we have time but we will jump not to the presentation. I just wanted to welcome everybody to the second in a series of advanced project bundling webinars. This session is key characteristics of lead agencies. We are very excited about this. There's so much potential with project bundling that is untapped and the possibilities that the agencies can do internally working between local agencies. We are very excited about this initiative and we hope that you are also and we hope this will provide you something you can think about things that you haven't thought about with project bundling and how you can take it to the next level and the next step. I do need to read this disclaimer so that everyone has a common understanding that this presentation was created and presented by not only FHWA but applied research Associates and Gransberg and Associates. The views and opinions are the presenters and do not necessarily reflect those of FHWA or the United States D.O.T. So today we have three presenters. Romeo Garcia is the lead of the every day counts 5 project bundling co-lead and he is based in Washington, D.C. and also David Unkefer is with the resource Center in Atlanta, Georgia and his role is project management engineer and the third presenter will be Doug Gransberg the president and CEO of Gransberg and Associates coming to us from Oklahoma. Myself I am Dan D'Angelo a applied research associate and the project manager for FHWA support contract.
At this point I will turn over the presentation to Romeo Garcia will be followed by David Unkefer and then Dr. Gransberg will talk about the tool we have to provide great insight your agency. Romeo?
Thank you so much, Dan. The focus of this webinar is advanced project bundling, key characteristics of lead agencies and I will start by saying a few words about the advanced project bundling. Next David Unkefer will be sharing some case studies that are characteristic of the lead agencies followed by Doug Gransberg who will describe and demonstrate an agencies self-assessment school to gauge the implementation. Dan Balz so describe the various project information and finally I will share a listing of EDC5 project bundling resources and then enclosing Dan will announce upcoming project bundling webinar series. Next slide?
So why advanced project bundling? Where why move toward advanced project bundling or a more strategic approach to bundling projects? Why bundle? Project bundling can streamline environmental analysis and permits, design, contract, and construction allowing agencies to capitalize on economies of scale, and supports greater collaboration during project delivery and construction. It says cost. Project bundling beverages design expertise and achieves economies of scale. With the project delivery solutions by streamlining areas project delivery requirements such as the environmental agreements. It says resources. Next flight? So what is project bundling? Project bundling is a process that is a single contract award that is used to deliver multiple preservation, rehabilitation, or replacement projects. It is designed, reservation or complete replacement. The contract may be procured in several different ways and may include design and construction with the overall scope, depending on the delivery method. Project bundling can be considered for all type of assets and can be combined with other innovations as the alternative method and may involve innovation, funding strategies, financing strategies to address a variety of programs noted in this work clouds and much more. The concept of project bundling has been around forever and could be called aggregating or consolidating. It is not necessarily been used in a strategic or systematic way. The next few clients will describe advanced or strategic approaches to bundling projects. David?
Thank you, Romeo and thank you to ever and for listening. We wanted to highlight some of the lead agencies to get show you what they are doing that is advanced. I want to start with Indiana D.O.T.. Indiana is really a clear leader with regard to making bundling in my routine part of the program delivery. Instead of bundling as a program that kind of comes along because of special funding or some other initiative, they did some research to determine how can they incorporate bundling into regular operations? From that research this slide highlights some of that and basically they look at some of the bundled projects and developed a cost model and then they projected how other projects would have fared in terms of bundling projects. They tried to look even a little more nuanced at what if they bundled different numbers of contracts? The table tries to represent what different permutations of the bundles would look like in the graph on the right kind of shows you that. The effectiveness of the bundling is related to how well the projects are put together. Sometimes the effectiveness does not increase a lot by simply adding more projects. I think that is kind of a key to advanced bundling is understanding the criteria of how to bundle the projects. INDOT has come up with the criteria and we are happy to share that or INDOT would be happy to share with they are doing. They are currently working on artificial intelligence and machine learning processes that take the criteria and automate the bundling in order to project the best savings. It is really quite exciting because they came up with a process for bundling that they could apply more routinely. In addition to cost, they can also look at other goals that they might like to address. For instance, somebody mentioned on the poll the make sure that small businesses can continue? That is something that they can also look at. The next example that I wanted to highlight is on the local public agency side in the city of Oakwood, Georgia, this approach to bundling was kind of born out of their desire in this small city to get better pavement management so it is one of those preservation projects that Romeo mentioned. In their case, it is primarily about paving and in the case of Oakwood they are so small that they were not able to attract a good number of contractors and created the quantity that would attract competitive business so they decided they would partner with other small municipality is in the area and guided by preservation of pavement management process. It is really pretty exciting how it is not just doing worst first time paving but instead taking an asset management approach to the pavement management and and coupling that with bundling. I think Oakwood found that the been said they were getting were reduced sometimes because they could get to her levels of quantities for the paving work that the bids were reduced for variable milk million from 1750 from what they originally were getting without partnering to as little as $3.75 per square yard once a partnered and got a large quantity. I think it represents a very good example of a leading local agency. Lastly I want to highlight Oregon D.O.T. and Oregon had two examples showing the versatility and they had transportation investment act at the program level bundling approach with they were needing to replace repair and replace 270 when bridges they were allowed to use various contract methods with design build. So in the process they strategically bundled their project based on the patient and work type in such a way to optimize the traffic and the cost for that is $1.3 million. But in the program I think they were able to bundle subprojects so it wasn't all so large. An example of one of the bundles was over the Willamette River Bridge and also you can use construction manager general contractor. Sorry for the acronyms. That allows them to address the complexities of the projects in the bundle and heartland connector ramps and other things that the contractor could bring in with his discussion and they said they saved 16% were $31 million by bundling those projects.
Finally, Oregon also bundled him projects in a joint effort with the Department of Fish and wildlife in the fish life passages and also through a number of different bundles over three years and so in the bundles they strategically developed the small contractors who could participate. As a result of the efforts they developed a planning tool but I think they call it the Mosaic tool which compares bundle subprojects and if it is bringing a certain benefit cost to the project. Those are some examples of lead agencies. With that I was going to turn over to Doug Gransberg. Doug? We are waiting for Doug, just want Georgia if you do have questions please use the chat room we will open up the phone later her questions. You can send David or Romeo also an email. Doug?
Kate you help me to shut can you help me to share my screen?
Without we would share these slides first.
Okay. I am Doug Gransberg. I've been working with the federal highway developing various tools to try to encourage bundling. One of them is a self-assessment tool. It falls in line with the every day counts criteria and the objective is to work their way up the learning curve and institutionalizing in the new practice which basically moralizing it in a way that everything is written down and the procedure is there and ideally it would be trying to develop a feedback much like Indiana here where it is done and to refine the program and make it more valuable. The self-assessment is based on 23 practices found during the research for this particular one in the top 10 and it was built around determine at what stage each of these practices were being used in your specific agency. I can say the tool is really not one of these things while you sit alone in a room and filled out. I will be showing it to you in a minute, but it is to simulate a dialogue amongst the team and decision-makers to determine. And were other opportunities for improvement? There's also a database developed as part of this particular project. It was developed in conjunction with the tool and the self-assessment practices. Each one of the practices is linked directly to a specific resource that is available within the database. The database contains those five types of data. Hopefully we will continue to grow and include more data. As you can see, it is lined up like this and in that database we can get to it and here is the bundling guidebook and one of the typical resources. It is broken down and these are the top five that we will talk about.
Okay. Now I need to share my screen. There we go. We may want to go to full-screen view if you're having difficulty reading the text that is on the tool here. The tool as you can see on the bottom it contains a series of times that go through the lifecycle of a typical federal aid project development and delivery. The first tab is user instruction, which has gone through some of the back story behind the 20 and why you would be wanting to use it. The first step is to do the input but whether or not you are using any of these practices and then was stages the project development and are these tools being used? We Ben Ray Lujan by project phase we then move on by project stage and one by one rate when the tools are being used and to what extent. Is rolled up into a final result. It gives you a measure of where you stand and where you can improve and finishes off with a capability report that then allows you to make plans for perhaps advancing your project bundling program institutionalizing and training. So here is the first page. The input page. I can see there is about 25 tools the first four are ones that are just assumed to be required if you're going to be bundling these have to do with looking at bundles early. There is a definition but what it is about or the ability and travel between the projects and maintaining traffic. What we are asking them to do is to indicate if those practices are being used. We have got a drop-down menu to go with that and the checkboxes, which stage do you currently use them in? The idea here is a you not expected to use all of them; however, by having some of these things available even if you do not use them and even if perhaps in your state you do not have the legislative authority to do something like the alternative technical concepts of progressive guaranteed maximum price is the fact that they are showing her core set dialogue I talked about first and maybe we should try to get this. Maybe we should consider doing something like finding utility coordination to the industry as opposed to just doing it ourselves. The ideas once you have gotten through checking these determine which stages of the project it is being used in and which operations and maintenance also. Some of these things might apply. This is the example that I'm showing you for this webinar. You then go on to the next step, which is to go through each project it on stage and rate yourself as to the practices that you are indeed employing. And then you fill in what your particular capability is using this as your guide. We have the definition which was kind of the overall 30,000 foot definition and here is the definition that is been applied specifically to bundling that first one early bundling and in this case and process and tools. When it makes sense. State funding and we can use the state funding only. This is one where we want to get into something else. Once we get that we will move on to the next stage of project development and assessing where the agency stands. All of the way up through construction. Operation and maintenance and this is a snapshot that is these practices that you are using. And where are you using them and to what degree you have institutionalized them by having formal practices and procedures that can be carried on with the future projects. As you can see what we have done down here in the lower right-hand corner as to the type of category that is and the environmental right-of-way and utilities. The whole idea was to simulate the talent that is necessary with this particular innovative practice for advanced bundling and use it strategically. When we finish that, you have the overall capability level and you can click a button to generate a report and this is what the report looks like. And it is two or lower at the idea here is that this is a self-imposed automatic thing and results of the dialogue is to look at it and say making the decision and if we are going to get there what is our plan to raise that capability level. At this point you have that ability to swing back to the database for that particular practice, practice number one. It will give me some examples, tools, case studies, and other ideas that will assist you in taking this bullet point action here and creating a plan to increase the agency's capabilities.
And so that gets us through the demonstration. I will now open it up for questions. Dan, are you going to moderate the questions?
Yes. I can do that. We can go to the chat room. If there's any unanswered questions we can place them in the chat pod and ask the operator in a minute to open up the phone lines for people to ask over the phone line. The very first question that we got before we actually jumped into the practices was the role of a small contractor and it was in the poll questions. Is it addressed in the tool? I know there is the database resources that can help with that.
Not this particular. However I would say that when you are determining the optimum bundle size and the Mosaic tool was just mentioned about Oregon and Indiana D.O.T. have been doing some research on these things and that is one of those places to have the opportunity to not only optimize with respect to the technical and financial firm but also on the scale as well. There is a desired limit, a bonding limit not to exceed then that could be put in as an input variable and the algorithm would try to optimize the various bundle and used as a way to make sure that if you are trying to encourage small business participation or if you are in a state like my home state in Montana were Oklahoma there is a lot of rural roads. There's not a whole lot of contractors out in the rural areas. You can use those types of input variables in determining what bundle sizes are to make sure that you do not create a bundle that is too large to draw the kind of competition that would create by the case study example the city in Georgia.
When I look at the practices number five and six is a big part of getting that input for your particular bundle what they are planning to do and get that input from contractors and enterprise firms.
Also the associations that are out there. Going out and finding out where those numbers are and which project sizes are going to be big enough to attract big competition but also bank that the huge contractors are going to have the bonding capacity to be able to do that.
Dan? I had something to add to that, David. If I could just add to that. I think as Doug said, choosing the bundles and the size but also the work time. Often some of the work types can be done in such a way that it lends them self to certain small businesses and for the federal highways and disadvantaged business enterprises. While it is not a specific good practice here on the chart, I think setting goals for outreach to your industry is what we are seeing fairly commonly from the more advanced students and agencies where their goal is not just to save money or time. That is part of it. Sometimes it is more about addressing certain management is an improving system performance. Sometimes it is about local economies and how to support the small businesses. That is kind of something that is just embedded in some of the practices that are listed on the tool here.
And even the writing of the use of federal agency for the contracts that is not a done deal yet. Using state funds would be used to that way, and those things are terrific vehicles for small businesses who are able to keep your task order science down to a level that they're happy to let almost anybody that is qualified to get a bond for a task order. So we have the two practices there and also kind of into the.
Okay. I'm going to reinforce what David said. The correct answer to any question is it depends. It depends on what you're trying to accomplish and what those goals and objectives are. We have also been is that sometimes they goals and objectives are modified. It is to better reflect the conditions in the particular geographic area. I think outreach is a critical practice that we are seeing that helps. Especially on the larger bundling projects. Depending on what your goal and objective is, the answer could be different. David, while you are answering questions, already entered in the chat box but maybe want to explain to others the EDC6 has this is a continuing initiative for the FHWA and how it works with that.
Is. The way our support of innovation is, and it is not limited to the current every day counts initiative, so if an entity has not used an innovation even although the way back to EDC1 and it is new to you, then there is a number ways they can get support. Their state transportation innovation coronation or committee funds there is a grant and accelerated deployment. What Chris was asking about was getting an increased federal share. That would be knowledgeable and I think you could increase the federal share by 5% or 10%. That is just in the law. And it is to help your delivery and innovation.
We have another question on the firms competing. It seems like this was a topic that we keep hearing. It is on developing this new handbook about how to deal with the best practices for the comment. It is reckoned on the work until smaller pieces where they could say do one bridge for example. You can also look at work times. One of the bigger challenges comes with maybe the bundles that are not geographically dispersed over an area and how you determine the goals and commitments for a diverse geographic area having to look at it one localized than the whole program. I do not know if David or Romeo would have more feedback on that effort.
Go ahead, Romeo.
Christine would be the best source to answer that.
Yes DBEs needs to be considered for what is the difference between that and a small contract because the federal parliament DBE for all federal projects are quite relevant considerations. To comply with the contract they have to be addressed if you're talking about a small contractor has been able to compete with a larger contractor, that is a reality that is a different matter that also needs to be considered. Sometimes there is a need to bundle some projects in order to connect. It is all part of the consideration of what is going to work or not. On these webinars we are going to try to specifically include some slides on that. We are hoping to perhaps have a webinar dedicated just to that subject.
I think that is a great speech, Romeo. I mentioned them both in the same sentence but there is a distinction between small contractors competing and DBE goals. That is a good distinction and I appreciate the boots on the ground perspective of Chris. It is something that we want to help people with because really interview it can be turned from one is proceed perceived to be a negative into a positive.
Operator, maybe you could open up the phone line if you give the instructions about how to do that and I will jump to a couple questions in the chat box. But if you could open up the phone line, that would be appreciated expect thank you. If you like to ask a question today come you can press *1 on your telephone keypad. If you are on a speakerphone please allow your mute option to be turned up. That is *1 to ask a question.
While we are waiting for people to call in with a question, went back to the child but there is a question on the availability of the tool. I know the tool is going through its final review stages before it is posted on the FHWA website. It has been successful with the 508 compliance and is in its final stages. I think we can make it available informally at this point for people to test and practice with it and we appreciate the feedback on it also. Maybe David or Romeo could answer more formally. It is not quite officially available yet, I believe.
My answer would be we cannot post it because of the 508, but if somebody requested, as you said, and they wanted to try it out, it is done with that understanding. Where there may to be a way that we could have help for the entity to walk through the tool also as part of a trial. If somebody is interested, please contact us and I think we will figure it out. Romeo?
David, do not have anything to add. I think you said it well. Romeo.
And thank you for the question from Illinois on that.
Okay. And really the promotion of the tool and the database work very well together but when you identify an area that you want to uproot, the database provides a lot of resources, as Doug has written to help you advance the preface within your agency all of the way from case studies to actual contracts to research studies and so forth. So be two really work together. Both are going through those final review processes and officially available.
All right. So we have another feedback from Christos. That is will send anything as David mentioned, piercing the practices that actually provide opportunities for small business enterprises of the restructured correct and it is aligned with the goals of the project and so forth. Shouldn't view project bundling is a negative versus small businesses and disadvantaged enterprises. If done correctly, can actually help.
I missed the comment from Christine in our civil rights office she is welcome to jump on about this topic before we go somewhere else. Christine, if you would like to jump on and speak to the DBE aspect of it and I don't know if she needs to press *6 or what, operator.
I think it was *1.
It is *1 to ask a question. We do have a phone question. Please go ahead.
Hello. Can you hear me?
Yes.
Awesome. So I will just chime in. The office of civil rights and FHWA has a DBE program analyst and this is something Romeo is pointed out and what is the opportunity for small businesses. Every state D.O.T. is required to have a small citizens pond. This means it is not an affirmative action program and is just a program for small businesses and such has been said that there must be available small passages throughout a state D.O.T. contracting processes. But that is a race neutral program we should be thought about by promoting and using the project bundling program management. The other issue is the DBE program. Any project that has federal funding must consider it is federally mandated and must consider the disadvantaged business program. This is an opportunity for small disadvantaged firms to have an opportunity in their federal project. They must be certified under our program requirements. After certification they are part of the unified certification program, which means that is the database. Goals are established for projects with federal aid, so this would not be a state funded project pictures your federally funded project. The goal is determined by the contracting opportunities, the market area of where the project is located and if there is DBE that do that type of work of the subcontracting in the unified certification of programs that we can say that there is an opportunity because those DBEs exist. The mayor not be available for the goalsetting program which we see a specialist in your state that determine what those goals are. These projects definitely have their federal funding must consider the DBE program and also small business opportunity. This is up to the state D.O.T. where they determined the small business opportunities and it is all part of the federal regulation. This would apply to these programs and there should be a lot of opportunities. Does that help?
Yes.
And like Romeo said, because of continuing questions and myths about how bundling affects some of these programs we want to make sure that we chose some examples of states that have actually turned it into a positive. You can certainly call us for us to provide some of those examples. I have been hopefully working with Chris to clarify that on the DBE side of it also., Dan.
And maybe we could get off DBEs for a while here. And I point out some things that I think are probably generally applicable, regardless of the type of project? And that is the disability. If you look through some of these practices in the bundling to do things like reduce permit actions so that we pull things together and getting the permits for bundling for certain types which turns up to practice three on work types and utilities consolidated utility agreements. There was a lot of opportunity to get all of the red tape done upfront for a bunch of projects instead of doing them one at a time with bundling. Those kinds of opportunities are the kind of things that would go into consideration of what is the right bundle size and what is the right number of projects in one location as he put that together. To do that, I think it really requires considering bundling as early as possible so that all of these other mandates and things that we deal with and the opportunity to partner with the local agency and this is all just kind of wrapping up into a single bundle no pun intended to create a number of opportunities that are synergistic.
Thank you, Doug. That is great insight. When you think of bundling people jump right to the construction phase with the environmental studies working on these programs all can be part of the whole bundling discussion.
Actually, just to add to that, that is really what differentiates Indiana and now some agencies programs is that they begin the program in process to consider the opportunities for bundling and how they can kind of leverage it to the max throughout the project delivery process. I think honestly we use the word advanced project bundling and that is what moves us to be more advanced is considering the opportunities to bundle as early as possible and in some of these other practices and so forth. Thank you.
Excellent. Let's wrap up the webinar by talking about the discussion about what is available as far as resources from EDC5. Romeo, I believe this was going to be you.
Thank you. I do have a question for Doug. We were going to demonstrate the database?
No.
Thank you. Thank you for all of the very good participation here this afternoon. On the next few slides I will describe some of our EDC5 project bundling resources. Next slide?
So for starters, am sorry. Can you go back?
Okay.
Sorry. Okay. So for starters for two websites that have information on project bundling and the first one is the EDC5 website and then also there is the office of innovative delivery. The EDC5 website will actually take you to the other one. For the EDC5 website you can see in the photo on the right there's the resources that there is a fact sheet and then there is another item called FHWA facilities overview. That actually takes it to the office of delivery which has a bundle of information on bundling. So move on to the next slide, please. We have workshops that are able to deliver on the can be done either ritually or in person. Currently we have had one already and we also have a day and a half. And it is more tailored toward a particular state bringing in some experts from other states to help promote bundling. The workshop is just a gathering of member states together to share information back and forth were also offering some targeted technical assistance the box up to "48 Hours" also presentations and webinars just like the one we are having here today we have case studies we have some how-to briefs that we are developing, and one that we might develop is on the subject of DBEs and the small contractors and there is other tools that are currently under development for example we are currently developing a supplement guidebook which would provide a lot of information that will help with the bundling. Anything else that you feel that needs to be developed or do you think you need please let us know. Onto the next slide. David mentioned some opportunities with state transportation and innovation counsel. The consented funds and also with Dr. Lippert about the accelerated innovation the claimant the demonstration, which provides up to $1 million available per year to deploy innovations for continued use. At the moment those funds are not available, but there will be a notice of funding opportunity hopefully in the new year that you may want to keep an eye out to promote innovation in your state. And onto the next slide?
So there is the innovation appointment means by two different avenues. One is the newsletter and also another one is a bimonthly magazine. You can subscribe to this either from your agency website or by sending a text to this number, 468311. You can leave the message FHWA innovation and that is one way to subscribe to this information I will now headed over to Dan who will mention some upcoming webinars.
Thank you, Romeo and David and Doug for your presentations and contributions today that they were awesome and I will just highlight that this is our second webinar in a series of six that are planned we plan to do several more going through the year 2021. So if you missed last months presentation webinar it was on project bundling with work bundled by agencies that we highlighted and it is a real safety intersection improvement and also several other examples of work type set up and bundled very successfully. That recording presentation is available at that link. Next month we're talking about making a business case for will use case studies to demonstrate how agencies have advanced project bundling within the agency. For example, a bridge in Kentucky and there is an Ohio bridge partnership institutionalizing the practice, like David has mentioned with the Indiana D.O.T. we will go into detail on that next month. And then for December we will have a special session just on local public agencies and how local agencies are working together to bundle and health states are working together. And then in the January webinar will focus on more details about the how to and the quick start reference guide to get you going on the program or institutionalizing bundling within the agency. It is decision-making tools and so forth in February we plan to talk about the issues that people have come up with them when they work on bundling and how they have overcome those issues. So that is what we have planned for February. We are planning additional ones after this. For example, how it is dealt with traffic specifically. Having said that, this presentation is over. I do want to remind everybody if you look a training certificate, please put your name in the checkbox and either send us an email or give any other questions, please feel free to put in the checkbox and will get back to you with responses. If I have time and people wanted to see the database, I would be glad to demonstrate the database when we are done here if anyone is interested. Maybe drop it in the chat box if you're interested and I can pull to the database and walk you through an overview of the database. David or Romeo, do you have any closing remarks?
Just the only thing I would add. If you have an interest in something, just contact us and we will figure out how to help you with some of the topics that are coming in the future for the webinar. Just wherever you are. For the certificates, when we have the emails, do they need to put the email? Header that work last time? Did the need to put the email?
That is a good question. Do we have the registration emails or do we need participants to put in the chat pod their email?
I would say that if they registered, we have it. Other than being registered, you will need to put your email in the chat box. I just want to make sure because we would have a tough time chasing people down so just go at it that way. If you registered, we have got your email.
That is a good point. Thank you. I do see that there is some interest in the database. If it is okay with you, David and Romeo and we have another half hour in this room, so I like to show the demonstration for those who can stick around.
That would be great. Thank you. Yes.
All right. So let me jump to my demonstration on the database let me see if I can pull it up here. Here we go. All right. Can everybody see the database showing? Or is that not the database? Is the database showing now?
Yes.
Okay. For some reason I do not see it on my screen. David or Romeo, what is showing on the screen right now? Is it the database introduction page?
Yes.
Okay. Awesome. So let me walk you through the database. As Doug has mentioned, we purposely connected these together. So the database is the Excel spreadsheet and it will be converted into an HTML version for posting on the website. I believe that is the direction we are heading in so it can be maintained and meet accessibility requirements. The database is broken down into five categories of topics and this introduction page outlines them. We have a tab that is full of case studies that have been done on project bundling and it is something like 17 case studies and another seven or eight for the quick start reference. The D.O.T. had actually bundled project and had contracts available publicly online the we have a tab on programs where agents have created project bundling programs in specific programs further agency that large-scale. We have another tab that lists references from central Highway administration or agencies putting together guidance and reference documents and that we have a tab on research so the studies to academic research that has been done on project bundling. It is called by different names, and I will show you each one of these times here in a second, but that is how the database is broken down. We are looking at even adding more data to this over time. It is worth specific project details. I go to the case studies tabs, and the spreadsheet is designed so that you can sort it however you would like. For example, the case study if you want to sort by the way the project delivery methods for you can check which projects were delivered and then sort the case studies by that method is we have the agency and it is published someplace where it is in the guidebook or on the website or location and what the objectives were again. Some of the key factors in the case study that we felt were of interest. For example, procurement methods and the type of program that was with the state and local type thing. And then if we fill in more details with the case studies we would provide a link. Is it showing up upon the screen okay?
Yes it is.
Okay. Great. And Doug, David, and Romeo, chime in wherever you want. As Doug mentioned in the 25 practices that are in this self-assessment you can see all 25 practices listed. For example, if your agency wanted to improve practice one, for example, you can actually sort these case studies that deal with a bundling during the program. So scrolling down through this, one, two, three, four, five, keep going until 10 or so case studies out of the 35 or so that we had that actually were discussed with early bundling. It is intended to be a resource to help your agency improve the practice. And then you can sort any one of the practices if you want more information on it. Let's build a case study and this is the contact information that you want to talk directly with the agency who is willing to help fellow sister agencies improve their process. I was the deputy director of the program for the state D.O.T., I often called my colleagues and asked how they handled certain situations and tried to be very cooperative that. The ones that we found that were slow and was looking for more Georgia and your state D.O.T. actually published online the contract documents this tab actually will give you a link to the contract documents if you want to know how it was actually structured. You can sort it by the type of work state or local or state or federal funding sources and delivery method and so forth. And then if you go to the right all of the 25 practices are here. You can sort by those practices. If you are looking for a contract example of how certain things were handled. Programs 37 programs that are highlighted here. It would be the bigger programs with bundling and again links to the website are provided here. Screening criteria on the program and if it was the federal or other funding sources. Again, the delivery method again and which of those program is information that I hope you improve your program in that practice area. He lost his references. These are document that were published for project bundling and the resources available. The example here is the guidebook and we get a link to the actual document and we can look at the project bundling guidebook which is a great resource cradle-to-grave of how project bundling can be done specifically for bridges but if you put the word bridge at a pavement in, everything applies the same way. They work types would be slightly different, but the process really applies to all work types. What this tab is is a bunch of resources that help agencies sort by the practice area. And the last tab is research. There is eight different types of research that is been done that apply to project bundling directly in the links to these studies. I hear some of graduate and PhD studies on what has been done Indiana at bundling and the results are some really good data to support bundling and some interesting facts that larger is not necessarily better. There's an octave and size of how to do that. Other resources are listed here. Again, we did our best to determine which of the 25 practices and you can get more information on those research studies. Okay. That is in a nutshell. And what is really quick and it will take some more questions if anyone would like to discuss it. And operator, can we open the phone line or is it just *1?
They are open and if you like to ask a question or make a comment at any time, you can press *1 on your telephone. All right. They're not any phone questions. That is *1.
And I do not see any questions in the chat box. David or Doug or Romeo, do you want to add anything that I missed?
We have a chat box question from Kim Romano.
Yes. It will be available to everyone officially and as mentioned earlier, it is going to a final review and the 508 compliance activity to make it less taxable to the users that downloaded or accessed it through the FHWA website. As David mentioned earlier, they are available informally right now for people who want to take a look at it and see if it works and offer any improvement suggestions that I hope I'm not speaking out of turn. Do you have anything to add to that?
Think it is the same as the self-assessment tool. Just let us know and we will figure out how to put it into your hands on a trial basis.
And again I would just emphasized that both the self-assessment and the database worked very well together work independently as well as working together. I think Doug mentioned on the self-assessment ideally we see a group of people that are involved in project bundling and gotten over the 25 practices and escorted that way from the agency to develop a work plan to look at the biggest benefit, taking that approach.
I think is an assessment when you are trying to constructively assess where you are with regard to this particular initiative and the look of those things that are attractive to your agency. It is not and everything will work for everybody type of a thing, but when you identify an area that you would like to improve in, then you can turn to this database and the database will point you to some stuff that you can read to assist you in making the decision. If you need help beyond that, we can call David and Romeo and they will be Johnny on the spot.
Very good. I know we emphasize this but the self-assessment tool was designed to be very flexible for the agency. That is where the agency gets to decide which practice they want to pursue. Beside the first four that are kind of like mandatory, the rest is really the flexibility built to select those practices that we know some agencies do not have the design build, for example. Maybe that could be part of your bundling practice at this point and you do not need to include that in your action plan. On the other hand, you may want to included to and by that as an improvement opportunity. The flexibility is pretty amazing how can be adopted to an individual agency and that was just the state D.O.T. but any agency.
And I think also whether you can do it or not to die it gives you the question we should be doing and perhaps leading to looking at getting the authority necessary to do something like will get her chromatic agreement or per month for research and extension product that would fit within a small project or bundling type project.
Very good. 25 practices were based on the case studies and the research that was done. Will come across the country on the project operates and what were the practices that identified in they should be considered for the bundling of birds we have yet to come across measuring the performance which would be optimized if you look at the matrix at the optimized level. Someone very close to doing that, like Indiana. We do see it across all agencies.
All right. If there is no more questions on the phone or the chat pod, did I miss any questions?
We do not have any more questions.
Okay. Thank you. Romeo, do you have any last minute words?
Just thank you to everyone who participated and thank you for the questions we have some homework to do here and there. Let us know what else we can help you with within the bundling initiative and advances toward that initiative. Thank you.
David, do you have any closing thoughts?
Will said, Romeo. Let us know how we can help.
Again thank you Doug, Romeo, and David for your presentation. It was excellent and great tools that I'm looking forward to getting some feedback on them and thank you to all of the participants for sticking around for an extra 20 minutes. Hopefully the self-assessment tool and database grab your interest and you will take advantage of those tools to improve your processes. Having said that I will conclude the meeting and thank you, everybody, for participating.
Thank you.
That concludes today's presentation. Thank you for your participation. You may now disconnect.
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