Bundled Facilities Overview

JV 461 Brighton Township, Beaver County

Project bundling is a procurement process where a single contract is used for the rehabilitation or replacement of multiple projects. Bundled contracts may also include the design and ongoing maintenance of those facilities. Bundled contracts may be used a single county, metropolitan region or state and they may also be tiered to allow a combination of different types of work. Bundling strategies achieve economies of scale and builds momentum to remediate critical facilities that are often in deficient condition.

Project bundling enables project sponsors to address large numbers of projects with similar needs using standard and cost effective rehabilitation and replacement strategies. The resulting economies of scale increase efficiency and creates the potential for cost and time savings. Larger bundled contracts may also attract private investors or larger and more experience contractors and help sponsoring agencies reduce project backlogs. States and other project sponsors are using multiple funding sources and financing tools to pay for these larger contracts.

Asset bundling may be used with a wide range of projects including roads, traffic signals, fiber optic and broadband networks, travel plazas, alternative fuel stations, and parking facilities. Given the large number of structurally deficient bridges across the country, contracts bundling bridge replacements and repair are increasingly common. These bridges are often smaller, low-volume structures located in rural areas. However, closures or limits on vehicle weights affect travel time, freight movements, and emergency response times adversely. Smaller rural bridges often lend themselves well to bundling because standardized designs can be used for replacement structures.

As shown below, states and local regions are using project bunding on many different types of projects.

Bridge Bundling Projects: State Departments of Transportation in Georgia, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nebraska, New York, Ohio, Oregon and Rhode Island have undertaken bridge bunding programs to reduce costs and streamline design and construction. The $1.1 billion Pennsylvania Rapid Bridge Replacement Project is replacing 558 structurally deficient bridges through a public-private partnership (P3) procurement. In addition to designing, financing and reconstructing the bridges, the private partner will maintain them for 25 years. Project bundling can be undertaken at the state or local level, as in Northampton County, Pennsylvania, which has bundled the remediation/ replacement of 33 bridges in to a $37.5 million design-build-finance-maintain contract extending over 14 years.
Road Bundling Projects: The City of Flagstaff in Arizona regularly groups smaller road repair, overlay and safety projects into geographically grouped procurements. This enables it to procure larger projects, which contractors prefer. In additional to attracting more competitive bids, the bundled projects are more efficient for city staff to manage. Michigan has bundled asphalt resurfacing projects on State Road 17 and U.S. 31.
Freeway Lighting Bundling Projects: Michigan DOT has entered a $172 million, 15-year P3 agreement to upgrade and maintain highway lighting in metropolitan Detroit. After a two-year construction period where it installed energy-efficient LED lighting, the private partner is responsible for keeping the lights operational to defined performance standards over a 15-year period. Other states including Arizona, the District of Colombia, Florida, Illinois, Massachusetts, and Virginia, have bundled projects for lighting systems involving 15,000 to 70,000 street lights.
Broadband & Fiber Optic Bundling Projects: The Kentucky Transportation Cabinet awarded a P3 contract to develop a 3,000-mile fiber optic network along roads throughout the state. The first segments are scheduled to be operational in less than two years and the system will ultimately extend across all of the commonwealth's 120 counties. Other states bundling broadband and fiber optic projects include Arizona, Alabama, California, Colorado, District of Colombia Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Illinois, Massachusetts, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington.
Travel Plaza Bundling Projects: In 2009, the Connecticut DOT awarded a single contract to a private investment partner to upgrade, operate, and maintain its 23 highway travel plazas located on routes I-95, I-395 and 15. The original facilities were built in the 1940s and 1950s and had seen no significant capital improvements in the prior 25 years. The 35-year concession required the private operator to fund $178 million in facility upgrades within five years. The operator is also required to pay Connecticut DOT a minimum rent, as well as a percentage of gross revenues and a fee per gallon of fuel sold. These rates increase every five years. Other states that have bundled travel plaza concessions include Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan and Ohio.
Electric Vehicle Charging Station Bundling Projects: Washington state is planning to bundle the procurement of electric vehicle fast charging stations near exits along major highways. Electric vehicle charging stations are anticipated to be located at private businesses along the I-5, I-90, US 2, US 101, I-82, and US 395 corridors and other key roadways in the state. Washington State has launched numerous efforts to help expand and promote the purchase and use of electric vehicles, and it is also working to ensure more fast-charging stations are available along major commuter corridors. The state's goal is to be able to support a fleet of 50,000 plug-in electric vehicles by 2020.
Natural Gas Fueling Station Bundling Projects: In 2016, the Pennsylvania DOT awarded a $84.5 million design-build-finance-operate-maintain contract to install compressed natural gas (CNG) fueling stations at 29 public transit agency sites. The private partner be responsible for operating the fueling stations for 20 years. Seven of the fueling stations will also sell CNG to private citizens, with the state receiving a 15 percent royalty for fuel sold to the public. This bundled project capitalizes on the abundance of natural gas in Pennsylvania and is intended to encourage transit agencies to utilize CNG vehicles by reducing fuel costs. When completed, the fueling stations will supply gas to more than 1,600 CNG buses operating in the state.

Resources

College/University Lecture and Course Materials - February 2021
This webpage contains materials that make up part of a university lecture materials and associated exercises for project bundling including solutions for each exercise. These materials can be used for transportation professional self-learning or distributed to students to become more familiar with bundling for project and program delivery.

Project Bundling can help increase the performance of all three legs of the construction “stool,” time, cost, and quality. It is intuitive that only having to do the paperwork for one contract will make that process go five times faster than it would for five individual projects.It is intuitive to anyone with the most basic understanding of economics that purchasing the necessary materials for five projects will get one a better price than if one is buying materials for a single project. Finally, quality is enhanced, along with speed, as work crews perform the same projects over and over in five projects instead of for one. And, of course, everything improves when the relationships between project personnel grow through familiarity. Improved relationships lead to improved collaboration.
- Project Bundling University Lecture with detailed notes to be used as an ‘off the shelf’ college/university lecture
- Project Bundling—Class Assignment #1: Participants can assume a position to recommend whether the public transportation agency for which you work should use project bundling, and which projects to bundle
- Solution/Answer Key Project Bundling—Class Assignment #1: Provides answers to the class assignment #1 with detail explanation and examples
- Project Bundling—Assignment #2: Participants are asked to list the projects in the proposed bundle(s) based on the current funding sources available for each bridge and write a short explanation of rational for their bundles.
- Solution/Answer Key Project Bundling—Class Assignment #2: Provides explanation to students and instructor including acceptable answers
Project Bundling Resource Database - January 2021

This database captures project bundling related information, the "how, why, and by what means," to assist agencies and others in the development of project bundling projects, programs and initiatives. This database was created as part of the Federal Highway Administration's Every Day Count Five (EDC5) Project Bundling innovation initiative. This database is divided into five categories - case studies, contracts, programs, references, and research as described below
- Case Studies: The Case Studies component of this database includes state and local agency bundling projects. These case studies cover a variety of works types, project delivery methods, funding mechanisms, and scope (local to statewide).
- Contracts: The Contracts component provides a summary of actual project bundling contracts with links to contract documents.
- Programs: The Program component provides a summary of agencies who have project bundling programs or initiatives and links to their websites.
- References: The Reference component includes project bundling related guidance from the Federal Highway Administration, State Departments of Transportation, Local agencies, and others.
- Research: The Research component provides a summary of project bundling related academic and agency sponsored research related to project bundling.
- How to use: Tabs can be searched by key words, sorted by columns, or by project bundling practice (the 25 practices are defined in the Federal Highway Administration's Project Bundling Self-Assessment tool - see the Reference tab for link to the tool).
FHWA Bridge Bundling Guidebook - May 2019

This guidebook provides information and a how-to process for State Departments of Transportation and local public agencies to consider bridge bundling for all funding sources. Topics covered include defining successful bridge bundling projects and programs, goals and objectives, funding and financing, coalition building, risk assessment, work types, project delivery methods, environmental review and preliminary design, quality assurance, and close-out. The guidebook also includes case studies.
Bridge Bundling Guidebook Presentation
This presentation reviews the highlights of FHWA's May 2019 Bridge Bundling Guidebook.
View Lessons Learned from State Bridge Bundling Programs »
View Bundled Project Case Studies »
When to Bundle (PDF)

Bundled Facilities Overview

Resources

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