AUDIO: https://connectdot.connectsolutions.com/p286p0tyqgb6/
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Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by. The conference will begin shortshortly.
Ladies and gentlemen. Thank you for standing by. Welcome to the U.S. Department of Transportation project bundling, the business process conference call. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Instructions will be given at that time. If you should require assistance during the call, please press star and zero. I would like to hand the conference over to your host, Phil Bell. Please go ahead, sir.
Thank you. Welcome, everybody, to our webinar on project bundling, the business process. The goal of everyday counts project bundling initiative is to make bundling a routine agency business process. This webinar will provide guidance on how to employ business rules consistently and Strategically see bundles are identified as early as possible, preferbre to be included in the state's transportation improvement program or STEP. As this webinar starts, we will first have a poll question that I am having on the screen right now. So, if everyone can take a minute to answer this poll question, we would appreciate it. As we're doing that, we will talk about today, we have our guest speakers and we will be starting in one minute.Okay. Another few seconds. Looks like the activity sloweddown. Great. So, our poll questions, does your agency have strategic project bundling goals? At least 3% said yes. 38% no, 29% not sure. And does your agency have business rules in place to achieve your bundling goals? And 39% said no. Zero answered yes. 26% are in development and 35% sure. Thank you, everybody, for those responses. Okay. Back to our presentation. So, today's presenters are Rome close Garcia. Romeo is from the infrastructure office of headquarters and is co-lead on this innovation initiative. David Unkefer is from the Atlanta Resource Center and is also co-lead with Romeo. Our two guest speakers today are Tom Evers. Tom is from Missouri D.O.T. and is the assistant district engine or with the St. Louis district. John Sanders is from Missouri DOT from the southwest district. They will describe MoDOT's bundling experiences and their efforts to establish bundling business rules. And I am your facilitator for the day, Phillip Bell. This webinar is the second in a series of six of a new series on strategic approach to project bundling. Why a bundling strategy can help achieve your goals and how to develop a business process in rules addressing planning, environmental, the zone process all of the way through delivery and into operations. Our agenda for the day, we will cover four topics today. First, Romeo will discuss the need for bundling rules followed by David who will provide examples on case studies. And then we have our guest speakers from Missouri DOT who described their bundling efforts. We will conclude with a description of resources available to advance your bundling efforts. Romeo, it's all yours.
Thank you, Phil. Good afternoon to everyone. Why do you need business rules for project bundling? There are very man reasons. To align with agency goals and objectives, business rules in their simplest definition are directed, defined or constrain business activities, and they're designed to help an organization achieve its goals. To assess and document current bundling practices. We have a toll to help us with this and more will be discussed later in this presentation. Tailored to your agency processes for staff awareness, education, and training when business rules are done right, they provide efficiency, consistency, predictability and many other benefits. Institutional implementation and provide a consist process and to measure performance and improve your process. As noted on the previous side, aligning your project bundling process with your agency's goals and objectives is a primary consideration in developing business rules. An agency's long-range transporting a plan, transportation acid management plan and statewide transportation improvement plan need to be considered in determining your project bundling business rules. Questions to ask, for example, might be how can project bundleying help achieve preservation goals? What role can project bundling play in capital improvement programs? And how do NPO asget involved. More discussion on this topic is available in the soon to be published quick start reference. So, where are you now? What defines success for you? How do you know if you have a strategic approach? The definitions in this table are cut of with the FHWA EDC five levels of implementation for project bundling. A sixth level has been added to indicate a maturity level that uses performance metrics and lessons learned to main revisions and achieve continuous improvement. FHWA created a self-assessmentitol for agencies to, valuate the current bundling practices, identify opportunities and create an action plan for advancing their practices. And the self-assessment provides the opportunity for an agency to raid the capability or maturity on each practice within each project stage and makes an overall assessment of the organizational capability. The resulting report provides a list of practices that could boused to improve organizational capability. So, what is project bundling? Project bundling is a process by which a single contract award is used to deliver multiple preservation, rehabilitation or replacement projects. The concept of bundling has been around for some time and may have been caught the by different terms like consolidating, grouping, toying, aggregate, for example, and so it's both old and now to transportation. Bundling is a newer term but has not necessarily been used in a strategic and systematic way. And project bundling comes in many shapes and forms and there are various categories and used cases for bundles. We'll talk about those in the next few slides. As shown in this info graphic, is plenty of opportunity to bundle projects. There are two main approaches to bundling. Individual project or asset-based. Which is done by reviewing the existing program for opportunities to bundle projects. Or conducting asset management activities and identifying needs and the other approach is by specialnistive or a major program and that is used as a toll to deliver a specially pupped program like AURA or used to make a case to secure additional funding as an initiate of. Most approaches have their benefits. One benefiting individual projects by combining them together, a more statistic approach. Other approach is to achieve a specific initiative or make the case for one. So, those are some use cases listed here. And another way to look at project bundling. And those are listed here mostly as an acknowledgement of what who have son across the country. The descriptive terms noted are not official. They're just terms we have come up with. Right own traditional specialty bundling. This type of bundling generally follows informal processes or procedures. And some examples are maintenance, rehabilitation type of activities and safety type projects. Initiative-based or bundling that becomes incidental to an initiate of or program, the bundling for a special need. It's incidental to the ability of especially dedicated funds that nod to be spent within a short timeframe. Last-minute bundles are projects bundled as a almost-discussion or opportunity. The catch-all bundling serves as a one-stop shopping and includes horizontal and vertical construction. Advanced or optimized bundling. This is more strategic and begins early in the planning process as well as established processes and procedures or business rules and this type of bundling leads to more successful results, what we are promoting in EDC 5. Why bundle? Project bundling can stream a line, environmental analysis and p. And design contracting and construction. It allows agencies to capital use on the economy to scale and income efficiency and it safes -- leverages design expertise and achieves the economies of scale. It saves time. And using a single contract award foreral projects, it saves procurement time and it saves resources. Project bundling delivers strategic program solutions by stream lining various project delivery requirements, like environmental agreements and standard otherwised design. The info graphics shows a case study from oakwood, Georgia. So, do you have a did fined process? Bundling involves aton-step cost that is not necessarily -- a ten-step cost that is not necessarily a step. Knowing what success looks like, as we discussed is the first sustain. Every bundling project starts with the describing the project goals and objectives, identifying potential funding sources and options is eventual. With the goals identified, a guiding coalition can be established and a project manager selected. Moving forward, the process is dependent on why you standing the opportunities and threats to achieving the goals and objectives. A critical step is identifying the work toon. Remember, the more similar the work types, the more efficiencies you're likely to gain. Based on an updated risk analysis, a project delivery method must be selected, bundling environmental reviews, preliminary designs, permitting actions can be very beneficial and an analysis of the different project delivery methods and selecting the most appropriate method to might your project goals and consideration to be given to incorporating the ATC, alternative technical concepts process and the procurement. Our QA will be conducted and civil rights requirements met. They must be incorporated in the contract documents. Finally, closing out the project and capturing lessons learned for future projects is vital to the continuous improvement and optimization of the bundling program.
Thank you for that information. Operator, would you please open the phone lines? We would love to have a few minutes to pull the audience on.
The discussion question is, what would you include in your business rules?
Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to provide feedback, please press star 1 on your telephone. A voice prompt on the phone line will indicate that your line is open. Star one to provide feedback.
Feedback. So, please use your phone line or your chat pod. The questions are how or what would you do to include in your business rules? Any thoughts out there that you would love to share? Once again, star one over the phones. These might include toys to other project goals like program development goals. Or organizational roles and responsibilities. What effects would that include. Or even ties to your camp, your transportation asset management plant. Any thoughts out there? Okay. Not hearing or getting any calls in that we're aware of. We do have one person typing. Go ahead.
This is the operator. There is no one on the fop lines.
Bell, you're moderating those questions?
Yes. Can you hear me?
You can hear me okay?
Yes. We hear you loud and clear.
Okay. Good.
Yes. I am looking for any kind of information in the chat pod. I see one person is typing. We have one question. And that is review process, make yet quicker and easier. Our thoughts on that? Review a timeline and all a challenge, depending on the number of projects that are being included in the bundle. The type of projects they might include. So they all have an affect to the review process.
Yeah, Phil. I am looking at the great -- that is a graduate input from Mohammad on what they might include in the business rule and that is just the idea of, you know, how it make the progress cr says quick and may be re-evaluate it from time to time to, you know, to continue to improve the process. The business rule is the process. The stig process.
Thanks, David.
Uh-huh okay. We'll give it a few more seconds. Before we continue on. Looks like we have another person in the process of typing. Before we move on. We'll have time at the end of the presenting a as well, too, to go over questions. At this type, I think we'll start with our next presenter. David? David is going to provide us with case studies. Go ahead, David.
All right. Thanks, Phil. I want to reiterate that the business rules, process, workflow, whatever you want to call it, ask nothing more than taking your decision process, documenting it. Making it consist so you don't have to rethink it. And that you can cast it across your agency, you know, easier and you can realize the results that we expect and have seen, you know, with project bundling. So, to take this idea of business rules out of the abstract, I will go over a couple of case studies. Later, you will hear from the Missouri DOT about what thirding in terms of -- I don't know if they would say they have a full business rule, but they're working toward a process. And so we're going to start the case studies. I guess we'll talk at a higher level, what we have tried to do with our EDC initiatives by creating a reference for you called the advanced project bundling getting started reference. If you look on the left there, you will see Jeff kind of -- we're hoping to get that published shortly and it will talk about the business rules and has examples in there. On the right of the slide, you can see what might be a agency's typical table of contents for a typical set of business rules. You want to start for whatever your agency's goals for project bundling andontives, define what you're trying to accomplish and toy to the higher goals, like program, system performance, you know, and member you're trying to create an asset management approach. Instead of worse first projects, you're trying to tackle the projects that bring your system up to speed faster. Address things like bridge deficiencies that Romeio mentioned or other things and what are the goals that your agency has and think about that. Let that drive the way you're beginning to build this business rules. The process. You want to also describe the roles and parts of your organization that will play a, you know, that will be involved in determining, you know, delivering the bundles. I will show you an example from M DOT in just a moment. You want to define what are the needs someone put into the chat, what are the work types that have to be considered. There is geographic considerations that play into bundling good, you know, together the good bundles and finally, you want to document the process. And talk about what, you know, make clear what is the available data for the folks that will be making the bundling decisions. And what is that decision-making process? And then we found that certain project delivery methods land themselves better to gathering, falling the full benefits of bundling, for instance, the design build or CMGC are sometimes great to make sure you get the efficiencies coming on the design side or the development of the environmental document. So, lot go into Indiana's example. In dottence ised the ability that they could be brought economies of scale. And they had an overall goal there on the left to bundle projects more strategically and optimally to increase cost and increase the amount of work that can be done in a particular budget. So, they commissioned a couple of studies. One by Purdue university and other by private consultant which, allowed them to kind of consider what would the appropriate bundling criteria be. Where were the great of the opportunities for success. What lessons learned had they found in the past from bundling, and then kind of look at what worked and what didn't. The table on the right there shows an example from the per to you report. I suggest that is a good way to ingam your academic community, it go through some of the data you have and that shows how they bundled different groups of projects. 19 projects in all but they bundled them in different ways and found different levels of savings. What they found were the bundling happens best in corridors when the geography is close enough and when work types are similar and you're looking for economies of scale, various economies of scale to create the windelling efficiency. It can be in design ooh on bundling efficiency. It can be in the zone. The way you do the traffic control and that looked at the number of projects bundled. Sometimes it was increasing the number of projects and knowing when it was the number of sweet spots for the projects bundle and the number of bidders plays into how well, you know, the pricing that you get. And so they operated the business rules that were built from the two studies for sometimes and recently, they have new commissioned fort to mashop learning and Automate the bundling process based on the business rules and data that they have. If they have found incredible savings they're expecting in that and confirming over time, they also have the cost in projects and staff time for doing the bundling. Very interesting project. I guess this is from the business rules, what they learned, when M DOT learned as far as bridges and large culhave are the-type projects, how to get optimal efficiencies. They found that you should bundle replacement for decks, brunch decks. Either replacement or rehabilitation projects but not both and for rehabilitation, you want as much as possible. Work focus on single-single elements. If you can, they allow the contractor to be a specialist in that particular area. Then, of course, you want to look at other things like what I mentioned earlier, work type on this is the work type of a geography. And how that plays in. As far as road portfolio efficiencies, those are some of the work types that m dot brock out as being, you know as being strong opportunities to help guide the staff as they select bundles during the early parts of project programming and planning. During the STIP process that Phil mentioned, so, they are way ahead of the game when they, with a, you know, think about bundling and how to, you know, squeeze out all of the benefits. This is withINDOT. Those are work types but we're not saying that you can only, you know, do projects of those work types. WhatINDOT CONDITIONS CONDITIONS FOUND WERE BENEFITS TO CORRIDOR ACTIVITIES. Probably a no brainer but appears that all agencies look at within the STIP, which projects or consecutive northbound on a corridor. How could they leverage the bundling opportunities of those projects, especially traffic and coordination activities. This is a flow chart that IN DOT has that begins to help them institutionize the process by showing who are, what are the roles that each office plays. You see the districts plow a role. There are asset teams like bridges that play a role and there is a bundling task force, and then the program management group finally helped to put it all together at the end. This is really important for helping you to institutionalize and make consist that bundling process. This is a slide that is going more of the machine learning idea that I mentioned earlier. INDOT's object ofs are on the left, reducing time and so forth. And then the machine-learning process is the five-step process that is shown on the right. Am not going to go through that in detail for time sake but essentially, we have been under the impression that whatINDOT did is transferable to other entities, you know, that are able to go through the process and have a reasonableament of data to guide it. And this is another case study. Quickly, New Jersey D.O.T. They have also begun developing a process for how they will do bundling. Some of those are the same things I have talked about. As far as delivery process and geographic location, work tight and so forth. Also, they have put in there business rules that all projects have to have the same environmental document to limit the risk there. They looked at work zone traffic control as a key item. They looked at right away you, and tillity -- rot-of-way and utility issues and make sure to clear things that won'ting in the project to derail. One project that would derail the entire bundle. With that, I will hand yet off to our government speakers, Tom Evers and John Sanders from POX DOT. Guys?
-- from MoDOT.
I am Tom Evers, the assistant district engineer for MoDOT in St. Louis metropolitan are. John and I are very excited to be here today. He'll be kicking it off. But, very exciting to hear the things David and Romeo talked about. That will be cold front from what you see from our part of the presentation here today. We actually started focusing on bundling projects in 2018 fick. Before that, we occasionally bundled projects. It was not necessarily a rhyme or reason or a focus. And we formed a quick-action team that comprised of many different people, ten, 12 different folks from across the state in various roles, design, construction planning. We wanted to get everyone together to try to figure out what our best practices should be. Really, we encourage everyone to follow that. If you're thinking about forming your own business plan, business rules, that would really be beneficial to get lots of people their perspective involved. When I start talking about project bundling, I think our focus was really, you know, Romeo referred to earlier in the presentation, our focus was really by project. When we're looking project.
Project, I think one of the biggest things is that there are many reasons to consider bundling, you know, at the bask level. It's about improving and maintaining our assets. The infrastructure needs are ever increasing. But, you know, the funding levels vary and staffing levels are a challenge. So, the first kind of maybe goal or strategy here is, you know, won't to achieve agency goals by stretching the dollar and by saving resources and time of our employees, you know. Bundling helps make thriving the project more efficient, whether in the design phase and/or construction phase. We nod to be proactive and not reactive. Again, that was another theme from earlier. We really trying to be cognizant and very deliberate about when we are talking about project bundling, be proactive early on, deciding early in the program when toco this whether it's down is or the construction phase and this is a continuual reoccurring event that happens every year. It becomes a part of our habit, I will say, as we look to deliver projects to Missourians. One of the first questions that we would get to is when should we discuss bundling. And we're trying to do it during the asset management planning phase to obtain maximum results and this is regular coordination, collaboration across all of our seven districts within Missouri. And these early discussions should determine if the projects are geographically close enough. If they should be bundled together under one project number or keep them separated and in different project numbers. All of this is ideal hill happening at the time of our fiscal year when we should be and developing new projects, looking to plan and implement new projects. Federally the best time occurs in December and February of eachior and we will get guidance from the central office. Part of that is discuss bundling. Figure out what projects you will combine and condense and deliver those. Those are, initiated. And there is one overarching ases manager for the entire state. Each district has their own pressuring committee on where we look at the projects and determine what jobs are best suited to combine together. Again, for those efficiencies and cost savings. When we look at what types of projects to bundle, today, combining projects of a similar type and 16 together. And similar to Indiana, I want to think there is a limit we see in terms of what projects would be best sueded and they all have their benefits to combine them together. I think some of the key elements, though, when you consideration the construction considerations, one is project look and as daft pointed out, you know, the corridor element of it is one we haven't historically done a lot of bundling.But we have looked at that. On the design side, we find efficiencies by keeping it altogether. You can is can is commen by all of is combone all of the reviews. It's consist in terms of what they're looking at. How we get distributed during the construction phase can be done differently. On the design side, I can see benefits in project look by corridor. Another key element you see on the screen is capabilities of the local contractors. Material plants and suppliers. When you consider bundling a group of projects, you don't want to grow it see big that you price out some of the contractors that can no longer bid on the project. Vantage point though you may think you're doing something good by bundling, you may get worse bids. You may restrict your number of eligible bidders or, again, maybe an impact on where the material is coming from in terms of how, how, what count of bids you may get on those types of projects. Another considering is the timing of the project -- another consideration is the timing of the project, making sure things are spaced out with the MOT and traffic conflicts between route and look. Also, whether you want to allow work at each location to occur concurrently or consuccessatively. So o -- consecutively. I think it's important to consider the contractor's point of view when you bundle the projects together. What is going to be the impact of their schedule? Are the contractors, maybe the mid- to simul-size contractors? Are they going to be automobile to compete or for a larger contractor? Are they going to deliver what you expect them to deliver when you combine several routes together or several bridges together under one contract. The final thing to consider on the construction pause is what kind of commitments have been made -- phase is what kind of commitments have been made to the public? Those considerations that are concurrent or consecutive, you know, scheduling of the projects. When have we told the public we're going to get in there and make the improvements on our system. Those are things that we continue to consider as we look at the strategy. I will turn it over to John now to discuss a very unique bundle, group of projects. John, go ahead and take it away.
All right, thank you, Tom. We enjoyed and appreciate the chance to be here today. Talk with you guys about our bundled aba contract. Again, I am John Sanders, the district design engine ear for our southwest district here at MoDOT. On the southwest part of the state. I have recently been working on a bundled accelerated value analysis contract. I will briefly explain what that is. Y that like a mini value engine earring study. Instead of a value engine earring study and takes three to five days to do, this is something we do maybe in a half a day to one day. It's really focusing on the practical zone side of our work, making sure we're being practical and there is a different way to do something. A better way. More efficient or economical way to do something there. So, we actually bundled nine different projects into this contract and had our consultant perform for us 9 A. D.A.s on the projects. The goals of that bundled A.D.A. contract were to, well, first, they're trying to add value to the projects. Won't to find the value and do what we can to improve our designs and look at our designs. Are they practical? Just kind of get that fresh set of eyes on the job. Secondly, we were trying to add, you know, minimal work to our current staff. We have a large program here and especially compared to the staff we have. And we have been hiring consultants to do, oh, 25, 30% of the work, our design work in the district itself. And so, it can be a challenge to meet deadlines, you know, and we're still facing a turnover. Losis experienced travel to bring on board. And less staff overall. Sometimes we struggled to follow people to follow or willty slots there. Ita been a struggle to have our ownpern toal design staff and review a set of plans from other squad and add value to those. This is giving us the opportunity about how to here a consultant for that. We have a commitment with federal highway to perform value engineering studies and this is part of the value inup earring work to do as the studies, the ABA as -- AVAs and moves us closer to achieving the goals and commitments with the federal highway. Lastly, with newer staff as I mentioned of about, we have newer staff and this AVA is a newer process for us. We have done the full-blown engineering studies before. Do this men, they're nowitor us and give our staff some familiarity with the process. They felt more comfortable to duplicate that on their future project stuff. And so, that is kind of the goals there. Kind of just jumping into a little bit more about the bundled AVA. What projects do we choose to bundle them at? You know, again, those are all the design states here. We were looking at, you know, really any projects, varying types of scope here. Intersection projects. We had single eyes, round abouts. We did corridor safety and operational improvement projects. Corridor expansion projects. There were a few of those that had bridge work on those as well. Required bridge expertise on them and in general most of the time, they were projects that would need a team of traffic engineers, designers, construction expertise. Those kind of folks to be a part of that mini VE and we rooked at projects with -- looked at projects with enough scope to add value to them. You have projects that are small. ADA, transition plan tune projects. Bridge, we have jobs. There is not a whole lot of stuff there that you can really, you know, look at the practical design and add much value to the projects. You start getting into the bigger tune projects. The intersection projects. Those capacity projects. You have more opportunity there and more pay items. Not more work to be done. There is an opportunity to add value to your projects there. And we were looking for the projects with enough is, cop, to add -- scope to add value to them. One of the important things was looking at projects that were at or nearing the proluminaire plant stage during that contract timeframe. We were kind of looking at, really, the first part of this year, the first half of the year and really, just the year overall. But, we had a nice -- of projects to make for a good VE and that were all dealing with preliminary plans around, you know, between the beginning of the year to the middle of this year and so, we began to bundle those into this contract. Again, when you're trying to do the value engineering studies, you'ring about adding the value there. You want to do that closer to the stage. You feel like you have more important to make the changes and not cause yourself a lot of rework and some reduced or some wasted efforts there for the store to go further. Our consultant who did this for us, we worked together and divided the nine projects up. We were going to do the mini dependence de's -- mini D's and each grouping had two projects. One had three projects and they would do a value engineering that many VE on that group at one time. And so we would group those off of when we anticipated those preliminary plans being available to do that VE on. And our benefits, you know, kind of what we thought we realized by being able to bundle those things together, you know. The AVA and concern DE were done in four to eight hours of time, depending on the complex etof the project. It would have been a pretty small job for consultant. Pretty, quite a bit of work to do on the administration side of things. Just for that little bit of effort that we were looking for from the consultant there. It was more appealing to the consultant for us to be able to bundle a lot of the projects together and give an opportunity to do nine of those in four different, four different timeframes, I guess. Four different instances. That is why we had to negotiate the next contract, versus the next one and makes the payment, the voices easier to pause you'reom doing it for the one contract there. The consultants were officially able to efficiently conduct the AVA. They went through the first group, you know, and we were kind of, the first time through it and kind of getting our feet wet there. The second time, you know, they were more familiar and used to the process. All of us were. So, they were more and more, fishiently able to do the other studies as you have group two, three and four there. Somethingthy had, a large ATM of folks that could pull resources from. Not necessarily every study they did, every grouping that they did had the same folks working on them. They might have pulled other folks from different parts of their company to participate in that and they had the same kind of areas like the traffic engineers, construction design and they had the same areas covered each time. It might have been someone now in that step. We have the same administrator for the company doing the AVAs and they were able to keep their staff up to speed and in the know how to do those. What things wonder looking forward, what expecting as were and we did. We have efficiencies there. Getting ideas from one AVA can help spur thoughts on another. We saw that on the groupings from group one, maybe some of the similar ideas you saw and group two or maybe kind of a offshot of that. Again, sometimes the ideas that you see in one area will help spur some thoughts in another area there. Those are kind of activity is takebacks, the benefits this we saw with bundling this. This AVA contract. Ile turn it over to you, Tom. To finish up for us.
Tom, we don't hear you at this time. You might be mouthed.
All right, thank you. On you might be muted.
Thank you, appropriate it. Just to share a couple of best practices that we have on the planning side would be to overall watch the balance of the overall programs so there is a mix of larger, you know, larger bundled projects or smaller, some smaller individual or smaller bundled projects for better overall program competition. Also, maybe another item of consideration is to make sure we're paying attention to funding from other sources. It might get a little hairy to bundle a project that has, whether it's money from a local that is contributing to a project or from plane our state cost share program. There are different things. Some of the projects are Edell on to keep separate when you're considering those in a planning phase. The construction site, maybe a couple of best practices is, again, proximity of locations. Definitely play a factor. Especially with mobilization costs. Having a contractor pick up and move their operations-from-one site to the other multiple times may or may not be beneficial. As well as drive time for the work staff and the inspection staff. Again, if you're awarding this to one contract, they will be able to look into moving their people from one side to other. That geographical separation between each individual route or bridgor projects important to keep in mind. Finally on the environmental historic preservation side, again, very much, you know, really to avoid delays, include your environmental group on those project teams and keep them engaged throughout the process. As you grow a project, the environmental side can get more and more complex. Even another best practice is that when we do submit kind of requests for environmental review, when we're both doing a bundled projects to attach a file or spreadsheet that shows each and every like. Helps visualize for them what 1 dolling with on each corridorror bridge location. In tomorrow on corridorror bridge look. In terms of how we track, this is a measure of development here at MoDOT. We have a quarterly tracker measure where we track all cupids of things in the department. -- kinds of things in the department. Won't this to become a tracker measure at some point in time. And some of those items that we may track that we have talked about as a group and our quick-action team was maybe a number of projects bundled. That is an obvious one, I think. The number of bidders on a bundle project versus a number of bidders on an individual project. Tryingco contain acquisition. Maybe the number of bidders, again, to try to insure that competition is not being driven away. If you're number of bidders on so low, but you windel too many projects together, as I mentioned before, that may not be helpful for a project, even though it seems like we're being efficient. And those are all of my slides for this presentation.
Thank you, John and Tom. That was extremely informative. So, right now, we would like to open up the questions to everyone who is lessening. Ask John and Tom what your questions are that you have in mind. Please, other enter in your questions using the chat pod or please call in. We'll take your calls as well. So --
Ladies and gentlemen, you wish to ask a question, please press star one on your telephone. A voice prompt on the phone line will indicate when the line has been opened. You may remove yourself from the Q&A time by pressing star, the star key followed by the digit 2. If using a speaker phone, pick up the handset before getting the corresponding digits. Once again, star one at this time.
Full, while we're waiting, I think -- this is David. I am going to ask a question for Tom and John. So, I like the twist of adding value engineering to bundling. To be honest, I think that is a great idea. It kind of forces the early look at standardization and practical zone. I'm curious if mocot, soms like this is a helicopter. I am curious if you're considering something that would be, I don't know. You in turned into more of a common practice. For bundling.
David this, is John Sanders. It was a pilot, I believe this is the first time we had continue a bundle, a value engineering type of consultant contract. We hired them to do one DE for us, might be four to five days long and this is the first time we asked them to come in and do a mini dependence ve like this. We're definitely looking at the outcome of the bundled VE here and I will discuss that more with our folks here and see if we want to do this more often or gan. You know, with our next year's go around of project. Once we meet find that you can do this and pot the process. Learn from it and make it bitter next time.
Excellent. Thanks. John.
Any other questions out there? For Tom and John? Please feel free to ask them.
We have none on the phone cue at this time.
Okay.
I want to ask another question.
Go ahead, David.
Do you have one?
No. No.
Okay. You go right ahead.
So, I am wondering if MoDOT has considered partners with your locals? We have seen a number of programs. In fact, you guy did the, what is it? Safe and sound? Safe project that was how long. How long bundling. I know that is not common anymore to do so many. But, you know, a lot of the projects, particularly bridges are local. I am curious if MoDOT thought about, you know, partnering with any of the locals to get to some of the problematic areas like bridged efficiencies, for example.
David, this is time Evers. I think I can answer that question -- this is Tom Evers. I think I can answer that question. We have considered partners with locals. To date to my knowledge, we haven't pulled the trigger on any initiatives like that. I think some of the concerns is probably both back and forth about concern about, you know, who is taking the lead. What kind of reviewing processes may happen with that. In general, if it's a locally participated project, like I said, the cost area hoject, we don't tend to bundle those with other projects because we have to watch the finances and under is that construction contract. If an element goes up, you know, or if there are change orders included, we have to make sure we've careful about accounting for whose money is overrun and underrun. We have not pulled the trigger on any of those today.
Thank you, Tom. I didn't, you know, mean to suggest that was for sure solution. We just seem not only states encourage locals to partner. Trip, Nebraska puts out, like they have a program where they're not putting money in the mix but put it out there to help locals accomplish certain key objectives of the state. That is one that is local-to-local and encouraged by the D.O.T. and there are others -- m dot is starting to move into this, I think, with their machine learning where they're going to try to, you know, look not only atindot projects but low -- at INDID THE projects and see if they can't provide the savings to the locals, INDOT because of their buying power. I totally get what you're saying about the funding issues. That is critical and part of the whole business rules. Have to tie it back to that. Thank you for that. Phil, that is all I have on that.
Thank you, David. Appreciate the questions. Very incit,ful. We have few minutes left. I wanted to cover a few house keeping things. There is a final share available so you can see a number of PDF asavailable in the downloads. Please download those for your information. There is a lot of resources there. If you want a certificate for this webinar, please enter your name and your email address in the chat pod. And we will get you a certificate. Okay. So, from here, we're going to talk just about the resources available. Look for a workshop coming in October. Right now, it's scheduled for October 49th. And that will address creating an agency implementation plan. So, look for announcements on a flier to come out on that. We also have available on agency self-assessment tool. That is used to assess your current practices. And then it provides a structured approach to help determine opportunities for you to get started. That is a terrific interactiveitol that is used quite a bit for helping agencies to understand where they are and where they can go. Okay. We have a reference database. That includes case studies, contracts, programs, references and research that has been conducted. It's really the how, why and by what means to act is of the agencies for project bundling. Then we have the project bundling website on FHWA's every day counts website. It's a terrific set of resources available there. You can spend an incredibly amount of time just going through all of the information that is there. It's a terrific resource. And then other available resources are a bridge bundling guidebook, the agency self-assessth America the resource database or case studies, on-demand webinar series. And then the online training course for the locals. So, please feel free to access those resources. And then we have a bunch of downloads here as you can see on the links. And then coming son, we'll have a quick start reference, which is extremely informative as well as how to breach, including the state local bundling program. When to bundle? How do I identify them in we ask questions and overcome road blocks. Project bundling 101. So, please make yourself available to all of those different resources. Webinar series two, so we have the business process today and October, as I mentioned. And in January, it looks like delivering bundles successfully than local agency partners in March and contract considerations in May. And that concludes our webinar for the day. I appreciate everyone's attendance. And the great questions that we had and our guest speakers, Tom and John from Missouri DOT. Extremely informative information, and we appreciate everyone's time here today. Thank you very much.
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