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Project Bundling Webinar Series

PROJECT BUNDLING: LOCAL AGENCY PARTNERING

March 15, 2022 2:00-3:00 ET

AUDIO: https://connectdot.connectsolutions.com/ph3ijtv4vtrq/

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Ladies and gentlemen thank you for standing by and welcome to the local agency partnering conference call. At this time, all participants and in a listen only mode. Later we will conduct a question-and-answer session and instructions will be given at that time. If you should require assistance, please press star N0. I would like to turn the call over to the host.


Thank you. Welcome everyone to advanced project funding. This is the fifth webinar in a second series of six all previous webinars are available for on-demand feeling and we will go over what those were. We are excited about today's webinar and the [ Indiscernible ]. This webinar is all of the great work being done through the agencies with project funding. We are going to talk about bundling, we will hear about states are working with public agencies to find and hear how bundling with other agencies. A few housekeeping things. We do have the chat pod available to ask your questions. There will be time after the speaker. We will open up the phone lines and you can ask a question. If you would like a transcript, mentioned that in the pod and we will get going. One other thing there is a download pod on your screen along with resources that we will talk about. There is a PDF of the PowerPoint. First thing is a disclaimer. This presentation was created and is being co-presented by the Federal Highway administration San Francisco Bay Area Metropolitan transportation commission and applied research Associates. It does not have the effect of law in any way. Only intended to be clarifying and share practices. Nothing in here that is [ Indiscernible ]. Today speakers Matthew Corrigan [ Indiscernible ] David Oglethorpe will be speaking shortly and I will let him introduce himself. We will talk about the impressive work that they are pulling off.


Multiple speakers


This is a series of six and we will recap the webinars that we did before. The agency defines project funding goals and objectives. Make bundling a routine process. Develop business rules for consistently meeting goals. Early bundling via planning and capital improvement planning. Preconstruction considerations. It was a great presentation. Those webinars are available for on-demand view. Today's agenda we will talk about local agency partnering for bundling. San Francisco Bay area Metropolitan transportation commission case study. EDC-5. We have four poll questions and I will open up the pole for demographic information to know what kind of the organization you're with. We would like to know if you are doing bundling. If you're doing it with the state and questions three and four looking for reasons why you do bundle. Or reason why you do not bundle. I will open up the questions now. We will give you a minute or two to answer them. They are open and please put your response. Another 30 seconds. I'm looking at the data coming in and looks like with local public agencies which is great and yes, with other local public agencies. About 30 percent have not done those and some are not quite sure. I'm going to, the coordination and issue there is a lot of good practices we are going to share. I will give another 10 seconds, and we will close it down. It will help us tremendously. Okay, I'm going to close it down and we will get back to the presentation. Thank you for your response. Another 10 seconds. Thank you for your input. It is helpful. Back to the presentation. I'm going to turn it over to David to go through some local and state bundling projects.


Thank you. Really welcome to the crowd today. I think we hit a nerve and wanting to reach out to the local agencies with regard to bundling. We will talk about the bipartisan infrastructure law there are a lot of details we want to make the point that really bundling is a perfect tool for taking advantage of some of the funding that is likely to come. I am David [ Indiscernible ] code lead for the federal highway every day counts project bundling initiative, and we have a contract to support locals and state DOT's and their desire to implement bundling and we will show you some resources available toward the end. They are part of our contract and you can take advantage of, I wanted to say that in looking at the responses to the pole pleased to see that there are number on the line that have on this webinar that have bundled. Even during preconstruction. I would invite you to share with us in the chat how come I guess we didn't offer you the opportunity to have an open-ended response, I would like to for those who have bundled especially local to local, we would like to follow up and kind of learn a little bit more about how you went about doing that. I invite you to put some of the information in the chat. I think it goes without saying that bundling is kind of an inherent issue and scale that can be leveraged to say cost, time and resources, and that in mind federal highway selected and partners project bundling as a initiative to advance during every day counts. There are some local agencies with collaboration that need more buying power either collaboration with other agencies and we will talk about that now and they will have a chance to tell you more. I wanted to highlight that we are just on the cost in enacting the bipartisan law bill and I will put the link in the chat in a minute. Or maybe we will put it in the download pod. Essentially it is a very significant funding opportunity to address our infrastructure in the United States. It is overall a large number of dollars infrastructure 550 billion, the funds some of you are beyond highway. Transit, rail passenger rail, wastewater, energy transmission, electronics, electric vehicle infrastructure charging. And high-speed Internet. Within the bill is about $350 billion over five years. This is a lot of detail that you may or may not need to be interested in, this helps to show how the money is given out. The big idea is that probably 75 percent is given by formula. That means that those already are decided how much goes to various state and other entities based on formulas. The other remaining part of that is given out in discretionary programs. More opportunities for local governments and other nontraditional entities to access new funding. That is kind of the big message, and as an example, the appropriations are made, and PO's and locals and tribal governments will be able to access, protect grants, streets and roads, charging and fueling programs. Bridge investments, rural transportation grants, reconnecting community pilot program, [ Indiscernible ], local and regional project assistance. There are quite a number of opportunities and I think if you go to the link that I will provide you will be able to study that and determine whether your local agency might be eligible. Let's get into the case studies in San Francisco and I will provide more of a broad view of some other examples of local wages and fees have benefited. I wanted to talk about Georgia and the bundling the projects with nearby agencies. As you see here in one example of the benefit they were able to reduce their milling costs by 80 percent because of their buying power. That is significant and there are other aspects of the program that they were able to reduce the cost, basically the city partnered with nearby cities to lower the costs associated with pavement management and preservation treatments. The bid documents and tabulation documents they utilized are examples that Dan will make available for download. We will provide that at some point today. The city of Oakwood they maintained pavements with a gross replacement value exceeds 21 million so in order to protect the investment they had a maintenance program that cost about two percent of the replacement value annually or about $430,000. Like other small municipalities they faced [ Indiscernible ] including low contractor bid participation. Oakwood set out to create a larger program of quantities and bid items and alternatives methods by partnering with other small municipalities to bundle projects and increase material quantities. The goals were to reduce costs and maintain the pavements is gone, [ Indiscernible ] and assist other municipalities. To provide a single task order and to establish a realistic project plan that meets everyone's funding needs. It really has been a win for Oakwood and I think if you will contact them, you would find that this is working very well for them. What we will present later will be a similar approach to what we will call Street saver program. The next slide is the Nebraska County Bridge match program. In just five years they helped counties in Nebraska repair or replace 302 bridges with the majority of contracts using project bundling. The effort began with the creation of the Nebraska County Bridge match program in 2016. The state was ranked fifth in the nation for number of structurally deficient or poor bridges. The engineer at the time said we had a problem and figure out how to make it better. The state legislator created the program the DOT administers using a transportation infrastructure bank fund, the law allows DOT to extend no more than $40 million to prevent, provide funding to accelerate repair and replacement of deficient bridges on the county road system. While it is not technically a bundling program, 84 the 106 projects in the first five years included bundles ranging from 2 to 9 bridges. It just turned out that bundling maintained a good way for these counties to get more for their funds. To be seen and rated well for this program that Nebraska was doing. The program required one Tercel from the lead counsel, [ Indiscernible ]. Nebraska would enter into an agreement with each participation County and would require an interlocal cooperative agreement between all counties in the proposal. Prior to executing the funding program agreement. There was a little bit of coordination but in the end, they were able to create a partnership that leveraged the buying power. The next example is the Ohio DOT bridge partnership program. Ohio invested over $110 million to repair or replace more than 200 county and city owned bridges over three years. The program was 100 percent federally funded because the O.used funds to pay 80 percent of the program and the Tony percent match was covered for the locals by using total credits and therefore eliminate the local match. They were able to partner with their locals in that way. They worked collaboratively with the Federal Highway administration to sign a memorandum of standing which allow them to bundle the entire program beinga memorandum of standing which allow them to bundle the entire program being breaking the bundles out. The first 200 bridges were [ Indiscernible ]. The goal was to replace as many local bridges in poor condition as they could with the $110 million budget in the three-year timeframe. Due to the cost savings they were able to complete 202 bridges with the original $110 million. With that, we are going to do another poll question. Thank you.


Thank you. If anyone wants more information, I would be glad to share that information. Here are some more questions. What are some bundling constraints between local public agencies? What are some bundling constraints between local public agencies? We will give you another 45 seconds to give us your answer. Funding is always an issue and hopefully there is more funding. [ Indiscernible ]. A lot of agencies are facing staffing [ Indiscernible ]. That is one of the deficiencies we are finding. The timing, we found agencies may not have planned the project but moved it up in order to take advantage of the bundling. We have a lot of great case studies to talk about. We see very little agencies with a formal document process in place. It is not very common if you don't have that. Consistent funding, measuring funding sources, purchasing guidelines. It is tricky to get that. I will close this backing get to the presentation. Thank you.


This is the highlight of the presentation. It is pretty amazing what they are doing in San Francisco. I'm going to let you introduce yourself.


Thank you very much. Come morning and good afternoon to everyone. I am with the San Francisco Bay area Metropolitan transportation commission. I graduated from the University of Wisconsin with experience in transportation. I've been with [ Indiscernible ] in the last 20 years. I have been involved with committees. [ Indiscernible ]. Within our region we have 7.8 million people. Nine counties and 100 cities. We have over 43,600 lane miles of local streets and roads. 6850 lane miles of state highway. 23 transit operators. Seven toll bridges. [ Indiscernible ]. As you may know, we received funds for region so one way is to plan to use the funding. There is a lot of interest in our region as far as investing for regional projects. And the local streets and roads. One of the documents that we do is plan Bay Area 25th the which is an important document. We are using this to justify why we need more funding. The regional investment policy is performance-based planning approach. Our transit roadway systems are an integral part of the bay area's transportation network and represent a huge investment of public resources. This plan not only reaffirms the region's long-standing fix it first maintenance policy, but also expands our community commitment to maintaining and operating our existing local roadway and transit systems. Local streets and roads needs assessment. Answer how much we need to invest that the region for pavement, non-pavement, local bridges. One thing we do is know what the assets are that we have. The first question is try to answer how much we need to invest as a region for pavement, non-pavement, and local bridges. Facilitate regional transportation plan investment discussion and funding policies. Streetlight signals, gutters, et cetera. Our needs assessment is to determine how much money we need to invest to get our infrastructure or assets to the state of disrepair. That information we are taking to our regional transportation plan. And use that to discuss about how much money should be given. The best thing we can do is we have management software so it makes sense easily, it makes it easy to [ Indiscernible ]. This gives you an example of what we are tracking. Of course the very basic one is the condition. Over the years, the regional PCI is rated from 0 to 100. [ Indiscernible ]. In our region we have been consistent in maintaining at 68. As far as the needs assessment, I will give you an example. If you look at the pavement needs, for the regions we would need $24,500. On top of that, we have the non-pavement needs which is another $20 billion. For total of $44.5 million. Based on the residence that generates the funds, we only come up with 40.5. We are short of money. This is how we can do it and use the information to generate discussion of how much money we need to maintain our local streets and roads. For those who may not be familiar what the pavement management system is, I will give you a quick overview. As I mentioned, it is the pavement management software and they developed it in 1987. It is used by over 500 cities and counties in the US. It is a good tool, and we are one of the larger users of the software. Pavement management software it is a basic inventory [ Indiscernible ]. We use the [ Indiscernible ] so we come up with 100. You do the assessment, and with this information, you are able to do an analysis. It is based on your current factors as larger projects. Are you going to improve it to [ Indiscernible ]? How the streets are being selected for treatment is based on [ Indiscernible ]. It will have this board with a category of five. [ Indiscernible ]. The streets are based on the effectiveness. The higher the benefit, [ Indiscernible ]. Hopefully the goal is to maintain the good streets so they last longer and cost less to maintain in the future. That is kind of [ Indiscernible ] in 30 seconds. It is ideally focused on preservation. We want to maintain what we have. The best way we found to do this kind of preservation projects rather than agencies doing it individually, when I found out about project bundling, I jumped on that because I noticed something that should work for us. Especially with the preservation. Of course I want to say for this case study I use the integrated just station asset management. Many other applications were used but it will give you an idea of what we have for the local streets. From the value perspective, the pavement itself is the most expensive asset that you have. It is over 30 percent of your asset value. However, the other 70 percent non-pavement assets [ Indiscernible ]. You could do the bundling as well so you want to look at using the transportation asset management approach. Especially which I will get into more, the safety aspect. It is important that not only we maintain the pavement but we want to make sure the roadway is being addressed as well. For agencies that, [ Indiscernible ]. That is how you are able to track how much money you need. Getting the funding or using the [ Indiscernible ]. Also they also dedicated funding for safety. Vision zero. This new program saves streets for also that is going to be a lot of money set aside for safety. This is another good way to do that. The new bridge program will be new with a lot of money. You will take advantage of that. As far as the regional efforts, the process goes through this cycle here on the screen. Take a look at the screen for your information. We have analyzed where they are. Countywide efforts looking at county by county, and we can start to streamline the process. And it will put a criteria in place that makes it easier. This is the part where we are building the process right now. Hopefully, once we get those important elements developed, they will be able to continue to finish this planning cycle. The scope of work. When I first learned about the project bundling in 2018, I kind of used all the funds to start a private project. And we had the task to do project management, stakeholder meetings, and developing the [ Indiscernible ] all the way to transportation. As you know in 2020, all work stopped. We managed to finish task one and three so that is what I will be showing you. Hopefully we will continue the work, and we will try to finish it up. I think this is a tougher job, but hopefully from what we learned, we will generate more discussions. Hopefully it will involve the industry as well and give us more information. Here is the selection criteria. Source of funding, state funds. Maintenance treatment. Promote pavement preservation. Aware of ADA curb ramp requirements. Project haps at 15 million a year. Multiple subproject at around $3 million-$4 million. Across multiple agencies a minimum of two. Once we get this down, I don't see any problem with that. You have to make sure that you select your best project. The maintenance treatment we do is to promote pavement preservation and aware of the ADA curb ramp requirements. They have to be in compliance with the law and we try to be aware of that and pick the one that is the easiest to build. We capped it at $10 million a year and select projects around three to $4 million. And across multiple agencies with a minimum of two. Local agencies have been doing project funding. [ Indiscernible ]. Here is an example of the pilot project in Solano County. It is to the north of this map. It is this area here that I am showing and it is in the region, it is rural area so it is easier to work with. When we put the data together, for this county, to get in one database using, [ Indiscernible ]. We generate a list and from there we select what streets that are recommended for treatment. The treatment is available in five different areas. We kind of focus on preventative maintenance and strategies. We can generate and use maps focusing on the area that meets the criteria. I don't know, I am showing a map like this because we are looking at 64,000 feet and what other streets need the treatment. When you have that kind of Broadview of your region, then you can start putting together projects that meets your guiding principles and goals. That is the process that we did in the project. The final steps are pavement preservation project listed in regional transportation improvement program. For information only since it uses state funds. Phase 2 is targeted technical assistance. That is where they helped me out so the goal is to create a process, and develop the templates for our agencies so we can develop a funding contract. The goal is to develop an interagency agreement. That is kind of what we look to so everybody can agree. In our region we use [ Indiscernible ] a lot. And we use certain provisions as well. Hopefully we can develop a process and outline and then we can share with other regions. That is all I have.


Thank you. That was fantastic. It was pretty impressive. The highlights I took out of that we have a common denominator to evaluate selection of your pavements. There is a great tool to use, I picked up pavements are the highest valued asset we have that only covers 30 percent that could also be bundled. Very good and thank you so much. We do have some questions. The highway program, is there any insight, I say put a link.


Unfortunately, Claudia, I don't have a detailed, for how it affects the program. There is in that link you can get the appropriations for the transportation alternatives. I am sorry I don't have any details right now that specific program.


Thank you. The second question we had is about the dollar value when you would bundle. [ Indiscernible ].


How much money to bundle? One of the things you have to look at is what are your typical, let me give you an example. If you are an agency and trying to do preservation, the costs you $150,000, then when you look at the contractor's perspective, $150,000 may be [ Indiscernible ]. You kind of put 10 projects together and then it becomes a 1.5 million project. Then you kind of wide interview. Look at your region and look at the costs, and then do the scaling process.


That is a great response. My answer is it depends. It depends on what your goals and objectives you have. We have seen grant improvements in counties bundled together but with special skills that can be done much cheaper. I think there is no set dollar amount. Project liability, I think the best practices we are seeing is each agency is going to fund the project and [ Indiscernible ]. From a liability perspective, it still does not change. I don't know if anybody has anything to add to that.


Now. No. Once you establish the different components of the different projects then there needs to be trust and accountability that in the end, the lead agency will have to ensure that each person gets what they paid for.


Thank you. We have two minutes left so I'm going to go through this quickly. In the download pod is this PowerPoint. All of the slides are in there. There is a lot of great resources. I am going to highlight them. Safety bundling examples, yes, there are quite a few of them. A lot of examples with key studies. There is a website on project bundling. All of these resources can be accessed from the website. There is a formal guidance book on bridge bundling. It includes case studies and public agencies and their bundling. All of the guidance and their applies. It is a 10 step process. There is a self-assessment tool to see where you are is an agency in your process. There are case studies and contracts examples and links to bundling contracts. A lot of other great resources and fair. A lot of other great resources in there. there is some online training available. Here is the website. The links are provided and they are in the download pod. This is the first webinar series with the topics listed. Here are other resources that will be published. Thank you for all of your participation. Very impressive presentation.


Where are the training courses? I put a link in the chat and you can get to everything. You will find that the training courses there. With that, I really appreciate everybody's participation. There is a lot of opportunity with bundling and please let us help you. Contact us if you can. Thank you.


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