Webinar: https://connectdot.connectsolutions.com/plvv4usybsts/
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Please standby. Were about to begin. Thank you for standing by. I would like to turn it over to your host. Go ahead.
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Thank you. We appreciate everyone's patience. We had some issues with the close captioning. Welcome to advance project holding. Were excited about today's presentation. We will talk about it and we appreciate everyone's input. There were some suggestions I hadn't seen before. So some great input on that pic and we appreciate it. Daniel D'Angelo My name is and I will be your moderator for today. Whatmac. TranStop maybe there's an issue with the phone lines. We will talk about some of that and the resources being developed. Maybe he can introduce himself when we get the phone working. I want to mention that this is being recorded. We are going to post this on the website afterwards. So, going back to our presenters, David, I'm going to pull your screen over, your camera and you're now showing life. A brief introduction.
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My name is David Unkefer. I will be presenting some more on the overview of non-bridge type bundling project.
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Thank you, David. Our features weaker/presenter is Peter [ Indiscernible ] . He runs the design build office and he will do an introduction when we get to his presentation in a few minutes. So, some ground rules, we will take questions at the end over the phone line. The operator will come on and explain how to do that. In the meanwhile we would love to see your questions and you can put them in the chat room. That would be great and then we will get to the questions at the end. And answer any questions that come in. Or we will have an option to do it on voice. Another housekeeping guideline, if you want a certificate, a training certificate, let us know. Send it email to us and we will provide you a certificate for this training course. Moving forward, there is this disclaimer on the webinar. I'm not sure when this went into effect, but the content, they don't necessarily endorse that content. Today's agenda. David will go over advance project bundling and what it is. We have a bunch of slides on examples of non-bridge bundles. There are four or five different case studies that Peter will briefly talked about. And we will turn it over to Peter Davich from Minnesota D.O.T. who will go into a case study and what Minnesota has done not only ADA compliance but safety improvement. Were excited and we cannot wait to hear his presentation. Then we will take questions and answers and ended by talking about some resources that are available to everybody and some products that are under development. I'm turning the presentation over to you to talk about what is advance project underling.
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Thank you. I guess we have called this advance project bundling because we are going to try to drive home the idea that bundling has been around for a while but EDC5 is working to add more benefits. Let's talk about that a little bit. What is advance project underling. I will also give examples of some bundling that's being done aside from bridges because, right now bridges have been in the spotlight for bundling because of the idea of reducing the number of conditioned bridges. Let's go into wide bundle? We always like to start with the Y because we are asking you to take on this initiative and implement the idea of project bundling and why would you do that? I think on its surface you can see that bundling in the construction and contracting, we have taken national best practices and seeing how bundling can also streamline lots of aspects of the project delivery process including environmental analysis and permits and design and contracting and construction. And just generally agencies can capitalize on scale to leverage as much efficiency as possible. Plus, it supports a greater collaboration among the different parties when projects are bundled together. So, to be clear, just at a high level, bundling is primarily a procurement process for single contractors use for multiple projects. So, I want to be clear on the official definition but we will get into that more as what exactly is advance project bundling. So, I guess the point I also wanted to mention, the point of this webinar is primarily to show, if you look at the picture, it is bridges but also other assets that can be bundled into contracts. So, what are the benefits of more to the white but what are the benefits of project bundling? I think there is a time benefit. Expediting project delivery because you are able to do a set of projects and move them faster. Or even as far as your program, for instance, you are wanting to advance some specific strategic projects to reduce emission problems or safety issues that you want to rollout, you can expedite those by bundling them together and that can also potentially streamline the way delivery goes and some of the environmental agreements and design that I alluded to earlier. Another benefit is the cost aspect. Essentially, I guess you could think about, do you bundle something personally? I bundle my wireless and my Internet. I get supposedly a better deal. I think the idea of bundling projects, at least the right kinds of projects, to save dollars is pretty obvious. We will go into that. Then, finally, there's the obvious contracting efficiencies. The process for contracting can be quite expensive for public agencies. So, to be able to bundle projects together and gain that efficiency is really a benefit. So, I wanted to really drive home the why and this slide from the Indiana D.O.T. This is a slide that was presented to us recently about a machine learning or artificial intelligence project that the Indiana D.O.T. sponsored. Basically, what you are seeing is in the table, the first column where it says combined INDOT savings, that is what they expect to save by doing bundling. The next column over where it says combined INDOT savings, I think that is a learning product from and you can see those are additional or are savings that are for the same project and if you look at the bottom, you will see not only do they stand to save $262 million in those four years by bundling, but they also, by using this machine learning and letting some of the business rules that develop and some of their data drive the selection, automated selection of bundling, they have been able to come up and project an additional $108 million of savings. So, I am excited because it's not only demonstrating the idea of bundled savings, but also the idea that machine learning, when you have business rules as to how you would do the bundling, it can help you automate. If you do the automation, they had a huge reduction of staff time for accomplishing the bundling. It took the time from weeks to hours and increased the savings as I showed 2/40%. So, this is really exciting and we are happy to share more about this with you or connect you with INDOT if you're interested in this. The projections are based on historical data INDOT has as well as research that was done using historical information. So to be able to project the savings. So, let's dive deeper into what is project bundling? And what are we talking about? I think we have gone over that definition that it's a single contract and it can be used for various types of projects, preservation, rehab, rehabilitation and replacement but, the word cloud represents how much more we see in the advanced approach to project underling that were trying to implement during EDC5. Really, that is another point of federal highways initiative here. Yes, they have had bundling for a while. It's old but also new because we have taken national best practices and combined them to see how we might use bundles and bundle projects in some of the ways you see in the word cloud there. We have safety, we can hit Americans with disability act, we can use different kinds of alternative contracting, and we can work on pavements. So, bundling is -- has grown up. I think that is what we want to share with you . As part of EDC5. If you need our help we will talk about the resources later. I guess, as far as more on the what of bundling, really, bundling can be driven not just by cost and time, all those those are two primary areas to consider, but bundling can drive what ever success for you. And that is the first step in the process. Based on national best practices,, that is something you and your agency will have to decide. What is that success? Is it time? Do you have political pressures? That you have to deal with? Do you have issues with your infrastructure that's important addition like bridges in poor condition? Or is it more cost? These will drive your approach to a more advanced and strategic project bundling. As is noted there, cost savings come and just kind of consolidate the effort for managing projects. Success can also be efficiency or can be quality. So, you might just in general, if you have staffing concerns, and you would like to run more projects with less people, then that is also a driver. Or quality. By repeating and doing the right designs and other things, you will see hopefully that the quality begins to be built into a larger bundle project. So, as far as the work pipes, this is just a quick picture of preservation or preservation type projects or rehabilitation replacement and you can also include maintenance or condition based maintenance. This is for bridges but this could literally apply to any asset that you would like. Where do you start? This is an example of the flow. Of doing bundling. At the top you see creating the bundle so, in order to create a bundle you might go about it in two way. You might go to the left in this chart and do it on a project basis. Where you are essentially picking the projects in your program based on a set of rules about what leads to the success of bundling. Indiana is doing more of that approach. It's a routine part of the way they do business. So, they review the existing program and they create bundles within that program. They meet a lot of different goals. They are aiming for costs, as I shared a moment ago, but they might be trying to boost usage of contractors or they just enhance the local economy somewhat. Then you have on the right, and initiative based bundling where we have seen a number of states, like Kentucky, where in that case the governor said they wanted to see a large amount of funds put into the improvement of the bridges. So, that became a singular program called bridging Kentucky. They had 1000 bridges to deal with and they bundle those altogether but within those 1000, they bundle them strategically to kind of meet their goals. This is a picture of the project bundling process. It's been developed in the guidebook but it's a process that applies to any asset so, we developed the 10 steps. Essentially taking advantage of national best practices. They came out of a study that federal highway did. All these steps are somewhat sequential. I think there is also a iteration that goes on back and forth on some of the steps. But essentially this is helping you see that bundling can be a lot more thoughtful, a lot more advanced and begins with the success we talked about a minute ago. Designing this to -- defining success and setting the goals. You might also find special funding and financing. We have other federal highways it EDC5 that are promoting value capture which is a special type of financing. It draws financing to project. So, of course, your outreach to your local contractor and other stakeholders in order to make sure you are setting yourself up for success. Doing a risk assessment. Sometimes certain things can sidetrack a bundle, like if there are environmental issues. You want to be careful about that. Select a work type. We talked about it a minute ago. Is the preservation? Rehab? Or replacement? Selected delivery method meaning is it designed bid build or design build or see MGC or delivery and quantity type contract. And then, talked about your environmental review. And then actually begin to, with all that information, bundle them in a way that I -- by this point you should be fairly confident about the success of your bundles. And bundles have been anywhere from two projects to 50 project. Some even have been in one contract, as many as 500 projects that is more of the outlier. More of the bundles are small. And they accomplish and meet the guidelines for how to get the most out of bundling. As far as some examples, of non-bridge projects, which is the focus of this webinar and we really want you to take home, let's go into a little bit of that. So, we have the first example is culverts. Similar to bridges but not. This is Delaware D.O.T. In the early 2000's,discovered a problem with large pipe holders had made a decision to remove them from the bridge and they got overlooked. The inspection. So, when they found out they had to deal with it rapidly. So what they did was they set aside a program of $1 million-$3 million a year and through the program they were able to replace hundreds of Colbert's and bring their system up to speed. They have used the design, build, build, indefinite delivery, indefinite quantity and design build. And, they have been able to customize their environmental permitting to do that were effectively.
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THEY GENERALLY GET BETTER QUALITY. THEY DID FIND THAT they had to be careful about the contractor and were they comfortable being prime. Also about the -- how well the RFT was scoped and not constraining the contractor. We have case studies like this. It highlights different situations and lessons learned. I think will be sharing a web connection in the presentation that will be valuable to you. EDC MNDOT might've worked better with the ability to bring the contractor on before the construction -- talk about constructibility type issues. If you're not familiar with aggressive design build.
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The next example is by the Pawnee nation tribe. We put this in because it's kind of a good of -- sort of different model. Projects are spread out. The Pawnee nation has combined both vertical and horizontal projects together. In this case their primary goal was not necessarily cost but just to draw -- to get enough work together they could draw a good contractor into the proposing on the project. In this case they are using a contracting method contract manager general contractor. They are able to work through some of the issues up before they go into the construction piece of the project.
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I think this is a good model for states, or areas that have areas that are spread out and they just need to put enough together to attract a competitive bid or contractor.
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I mentioned earlier -- this highlights some of what Indiana is doing in terms of they are bundling any kind of project, bridges, roads, safety projects. They are finding efficiencies throughout project delivery. Environmental approval and permitting standardizing design. The ability to share resources. You know in terms of their staff and contractors sharing resources. The administration's show in there. Cost-effective traffic because they can schedule the way the product is done. Geographically close together. Really the bottom line is what you see on the bottom of the slide is that because of the success they have had with bundling MNDOT has their chief financial officer allowing them to budget more dollars per capita program that was going into projects in general because they are experiencing a significant savings. I think I showed you that on an earlier slide.
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I think another example -- this is my last one. It's the city of Oakwood Georgia. Their goal -- Oakwood is a small town. 4000 population. I think it's a good example of what a smaller LPA can do. A local public agency if they partnered together with other local agencies. The goal is to reduce the cost of maintaining payment systems. Kind of the pavement oriented managed approach. They want to expand on the methods of treating the pavement that they have available to them by getting larger projects. They only have 22 lane miles. By partnering with other local agencies they were able to get together more work that could attract better prices. They also cooperate with other municipalities to help in the project selection and share expertise. They work on the contracting to provide single entities to run the contract and the task orders. Those were their goals. They have been able to receive better competitive pricing because of the fact they went from small tons of payment to a much larger -- as they cooperated with agencies near them. They saw the bid go from one-3 contractors to 5-7. A lot more contractors as they increase the amount of work in bundling I think that is basically the overview from FHWA in terms of non-bridge projects we wanted to put before you in this first webinar. I guess at this point may be Dan, can take a couple of questions if that's okay.
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Absolutely. Operator can you explain how the participants can unmute their phones?
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If you like to ask a question please signal by pressing*one on your telephone keypad.
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You can also use the chat. While we are waiting I have a couple of questions. In the INDOT the first slide with 65 million per year projected. You mentioned giving it back. Are they programming more projects as a result of the proven savings? In other words are they giving additional private on their program?
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Yes. Of course overtime if they continue to bundle that will approach less savings if you will. For now they are experiencing that level of savings and able to program more projects.
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That's a good thing. They get to the point of just the way they're doing business. A success.
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Any questions from anybody?
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It doesn't look like there's any questions in the queue.
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Thank you. Do you know how the idea became about? The city of Oakwood worked with several other jurisdictions to bundle their pavement projects together. How did that come about?
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Yeah, from the city of Oakwood the public work director I think his name Jason Spencer. He is I do another webinar for us. His program highlighted. He was the champion. He was with 22 lane miles not able to get enough asphalt particularly for those payments to draw good bids and good prices. He took it upon himself to go to the neighboring communities, municipalities, and start to partner on projects.
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That's a key point.
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Reach out to the others seems like it's been a huge success.
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Any questions on the phone?
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There are no questions on the phone.
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Participants this is kind of in formal. Hear your questions and suggestion on anything we talked about. I'm going to turn it over to the MNDOT case study innovation to sell safety problems. Do you want to take over?
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Sounds good.
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There is, Peter. Take over the presentation.
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I work with the Minnesota D.O.T. of course. I've worked with them my whole career thus far about 20 years now. I started off working in the Geotech unit but spent most early career in the metro design unit. As a squad leader and project manager working in a variety of projects and things like that. Got into some large design build projects and became a design program energy for EDC MNDOT. I've been overseeing the design build program for the the point in which the projects are determined through their predesigned and post-design in the event there is an issue or need of water larger group.
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That expense gives me a window into the alternative delivery meeting selection group. There is a group of three of us in which I'm a permanent member who has a discussion about how certain larger or more unique projects are delivered within that. The main purpose of the group is to determine whether design field should be selected. Depending on the project it could be a bundling discussion. It could be a discussion of how to use projects and more creative ways. That's my background. Mostly design build. I do get to see fun things.
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This light is about Minnesota in particular. I've been to a couple of presentations like this. A lot of times I walk away and say gee, that was kind of neat I'm not sure that works for us. They might have a different program or might work differently than us. I'm not sure. If you have questions like that, this is what Minnesota looks like. We have 12,000 highway miles and 5000 bridges. We don't on many County bridges like some states. We don't have any major 800 bridge bundles like you might see in Pennsylvania or Missouri or something like that. We do just about $1 billion in construction a year plus another billion in local aid we are involved with. We have about 5000 employees. With COVID I'm not sure anymore I don't see anybody anymore. I'm sure they're still around. It's a large significant internal design staff delivering projects by making our own plans and bid build and consulting. We are very familiar with using most tools.
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We are divided into eight districts. We have Minneapolis-St. Paul urban area and the western southern portions. The northern portions of the state our cabin in Lake country which also world that sort of different twin thing about it that way. It's rather districts. Our largest individual project caps out at 250 million. That happens from time to time. We don't get too much bigger than that. The last bullet there we don't do billion-dollar P3 projects. We don't have tolling. We do have CMGC that makes up 10-25% of our program. 3-5 projects annually. We use ID IQ. We do not use progressive design build yet although we are hinting to it before. We have thoughts and how we might use it if we had it.
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Moving on to the point here. As far as our bundling experience MNDOT is interested in building and we have common meetings and discussions and how we can use it more than we currently do. It's relatively excepting compared to some states with what we've done so far. We don't have major programs, or put hundreds of bridges and one bundle. We can have trouble swallowing that elsewhere. We have district size handles of bridges and bridges from one functional group in a district i.e. signs in one district or something like that. We have had good success with those so far. I have the bulletin there about having some trouble fully institutionalizing. We like to make it more of a regular -- on our program is the right word. Such that the legislature will devote funds to projects where we have flexibility with the scope to pull in as opposed to having to piece it out of the original project and things we have now. We are struggling to get it in a more grand sense with more individual bundled project level. We have packaged 5-15 bridges. Most have experience with bridge bundling at this point. We have bundled signs and pedestrian raps pedestrian ramps. Using IDIQ practice.
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We have done -- this is our most interesting and one of my favorite design builds I worked on. Rural intersection conflict warning systems. This is a large project. Back around 2010, our IGS transportation office was talking with me and others in saying you know we have a little bit of money and there is these new things coming out about warning vehicles when other vehicles are perching from side rows. One of the safeties safety issues is intersections and the ideas to warn somebody on the appropriate road when someone else is approaching quickly on the opposing road. Hopefully produce the impact of any crashes that may occur.
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We had some money and we wanted to try 20 or 30 around the state. The way with normally have done this was projects around the state would go to occur in some areas where there is not safe intersections and get a couple of leads on those projects and spread it around. In different districts and projects they kind of put it together. Number one it's slow and hard to make a centralized study out of that. Most problematically we didn't have a drink designing these our knowing that we wanted it at that point. With each individual district we had to decide if it was practical for us.
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We kept talking and I kind of got involved at this point and said maybe we can bundle these into his daylight design build project. If you use design build we can get expert design teams qualified to design things like this, and hopefully install them. We can get them to make a consistent installation around the state for more consistent trial system. We avoided several budget issues MnDOT had. The central funds didn't get parsed out to individual district silos. We were able to put one project manager over the whole effort. We did use IDIQ pricing for this. It was the design build project. Our finance folks were happy with me with this one. It was a first one we tried and it was complicated. We worked through it.
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We had unique features used to get that to work. A unique design. We had to come in and not to start building these out there to check if they work or not you have to come to Fort Snelling a closed track in the Twin Cities and show if this works using a bunch of prescribed test. You have to be able to catch 99.9% of the vehicles approaching from the crash direction and some electrical certainties and things as well. It was a robust process and fell behind. Our project manager was right to hold them at a high standard. We also allow them to bid lump sum amounts for mobilization of three different regions of the state and different intersection configurations. Design build projects in that building line items or quantities -- we are ordering a number of intersections and saying how much is it going to cost us to build an intersection or orders are and number of them. We did allow them to bed they somewhat part of the state they are located in with different rates for those areas. Based on whether it was a one lane road, two-lane road, or railroad adjacent and.
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That may or may not show up on your screen. This is the form 5 we used to put in different quantities when doing them.
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How did it work out? We had a $2.5 million estimate for the work. We had three teams shortlisted. All teams seemed very interested and qualified. We had a bit out of it which we were happy to see for the first 20 intersections. The system after that period at Fort Snelling was reliable. We detected 99.9% of the vehicles approaching from the side. It was various installations 99% of the time. Sometimes they got hit by a snow now, or vehicle or something. They were robust.
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The initial one was us installed around the state after getting past the [ inaudible ] they expanded it to 30 and ultimately ordered extra from the contract or to get to 55. In the long run it dissipated over time. We don't know exactly what the future is in the state. As far as bundling in the contract mechanism was highly successful. We had the design we were looking for. Something we didn't know how to do and it was replicated efficiently.
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In my bundling presentation I been up to get a few projects. This is the next one. This one I always get asked about. We heard you guys bundled up ADA ones how did that go? I would like to let off on this one. It was a learning experience. Some things went well other things didn't. I think this project can succeed otherwise I wouldn't present it here. We had a couple of challenges. Just to describe it from the start we basically had 3 million over the project meeting in a small town in western Minnesota which you may be able to see on the map. There were many dollars worth of pavement work and old highways. Much of the complexity was tied to the ADA and the pedestrian ramps, sidewalks, that went through old town center of Benson Minnesota. Our traditional experience had been that yeah, you address ADA but paving isn't interested in ADA they say okay, go do that and if you affect my schedule or anything else I will ignore you. Hurry up. We are trying to get out there blast through the pavement. ADA has been more of an issue for us. No longer able to accept that contractor. Separate ADA work from the projects and bundle it together. We had one ADA project and one subsequent project that came by afterwards. We broke out the ADA first. Something around 150 pedestrian ramps and individuals along with some sidewalk and other signal work. We asked for his pressurized team to come together and be expert in design and construction. We ask them to -- complete the design and take a lot of the quality because we wanted to go out there with a check list at the end of the day and it's not going to be a subjective checklist it's going to be objective. Do you meet this -- hopefully you can do it without high risk of us not liking it.
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Many things about this project works in mental and different. We downsized our regular contract and had to put it in to make it work. We had a relatively advanced preliminary design than we normally would have or a project. It might have been 40% along or so. They've gotten 40% realized the ADA wasn't going to go well. Given the initial work is set up prints for each ramp and say, you know, we don't want you to have the ability to expand your pedestrian ramps further. That's what's going to work best for the ADA design. If you expand the Avenue initial footprint we will pay you extra for concrete we put in, for handhelds. We don't want you to have -- the best design. We pointed at a few things and said look, replace those handholds from the start. We don't want those to be on your mind. We specified sidewalk linked so they didn't judge if it was in poor enough condition to replace. We established a curb ramp type priority ladder. Different types of curb ramps are more and less safe and appropriate for all users. If you can do a stand instead of a directional ramp -- I'm forgetting if it's better or worse. Base condition you have to get your rams to this quality and this designer something better, great. That'll be effective for the situation. Our intention was to say, you can determine how much design work to put into a particular ramp. Maybe mostly in the field if it's not effective to try to do it in the office. Some final field surveys and things. We did say on a couple cases if there are signals for things we are going to need to see designs upfront to check dimensions that would be difficult to come back and change in the future. We did leave them open as a test. Try to impress us. We scored the personnel for quality beyond shortlisting for the ultimate award of the project. It was key to the project. We had our ADA office involved to make standards objective for a designed design build contract.
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Our expectation coming out of this after we bundled it together was one of the more targeted efficient progress. We did have high-quality teams shortlisted. We did have a $2.2 million estimate when he came in rather high of 3.1 million. Percentagewise that was over and not our favorite number. We had another expectation we'd have less ways in design effort. All the angles were often the field and didn't work and we had to redo a lot of it. That was a very common situation. We don't want to be involved in that. We wanted to work out from beginning to end. And that level it did work. We weren't involved in not in course and it depended on how much they were doing.
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The big one we were hoping for was reduced over side oversight efforts. Trying to get them in the sandbox and come to us at the end and say, look, we did it, here's our checklist, are we good to go. He didn't work that way. Our inspectors ended up having more or less their normal level of involvement. The contracting team we had often made an issue of whether catch patients were included in the original list, or issues and wanting to do things simple and they could've put better thought into it. They had regular disagreements with consultants which was disappointing to us. That part didn't work so well. I think the take away from this one -- the main one was a flat work contractor we got. It was not as savvy as it could've been for the project. It did succeed at the high level. I don't know -- if it was a big win. If we had -- we knew it was a big ask from the start to take on not only a large bundled project as a prime, but also in a design build contexts. We tried to hold her hand in the end it might've been too big of an ask. If other states and agencies have more competition and more qualified primes we think the contract put together might work well for that scenario. It was tough for the teams we were asking. We had too much focus on the structure. We tried to do work to prepare them and remove incentives and things. It felt like there was too much information out there. We were asking for things where we hadn't. It might have gone back to number one again they were just not that savvy for design build. It ended up feeling like there was too much information out there. In the end I think it was still worth a try. There were some struggles. We did end up with a good product. I do think with more flat work contractors I could have worked well. Particularly in might've worked well in progressive design build. A combo between CMGC and design build. If you have the consultant contractor team working with our ADA office while the plan was being developed in an environment where 88 could make suggestions without going against a bid that was Artie established, I think there is some good room for success in that arena. I like to try that. We don't have that tool yet.
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We had a project where we bundled sign replacements together in one district. More or less five or 10 years worth of the signs to get all done at once mostly we didn't want to go away. The plans for all of these things going through all the trouble in sticking them in different projects. Kind of the overhead associated with making that many signs. We bundled them into one project with three teams. We had a somewhat similar result to the other one were maybe we didn't do our results -- job quite well enough. The contracting idea was good. It could be done again. If we did it today we would use IDIQ.
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During my high-level take away there is no reason that any work type can be bundled I believe. It will be efficient. It works well if the owner has the ability to design it. Design build has strengths from unusual work types and plan sets. The main take away -- the rest I am pointing out here is the market research is important if you are bundling smaller unusual work types together make sure you have teams that are capable of bidding that work. You will probably want to informally have a conversation with some of them. Whatever you can do to make sure teams are up to the task of what you are trying to bundled together. This is a good approach it could have good benefits regardless of your type of work. Of course as always communicate well. Explain what risks you are asking them to take on. If they seem frustrated or scared about it listen to them you can clear it up during procurement when appropriate. Maybe it will be worth your while to do so. For future plans we like to do more bundling. It seems unlikely we are going to change our ending works at the legislature. We have management support for different types of projects being packaged. We have plans to do culverts and striping as well as perhaps ADA again and maybe fixed price maximum scope. That's the end of what I have.
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Thank you. I appreciate you sharing your practical experiences on real life projects. We've heard some work types not typically what we would think of in bundling.
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How were right away handles?
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On that one we cheated. We had 40% plans in place with right away footprints. We did buy it as we thought needed for the ramps. We had some that could stay within those lines. It would have been more difficult if we hadn't and we are trying to ask the contractor to do it. As far as MnDOT goes we don't allow our contractors to buy the build. That's what we did.
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There was a comment about -- I love how you talked about risk management. Understanding the risk and the delivery method as well as goals. We mentioned safety goals. I think that's just an observation. The answer to all these questions depends on what your goals and objectives are in your risks. It depends. I'm not sure if this is directed at you. Maybe you can give insight on design build. On design bid build projects often have different prices and how can you handle that. I've seen it done different ways. Often it would have its own share. Without it was better when you combined one quantity. It depends on the geography being a key factor in deciding your bundle. Do you have any observations? The issue of price and location.
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I am a design build guy I like my lump sum line items basically. Even in beta build you could do a lump sum to some extent if you are struggling to get around that. However, I mean, at least in Minnesota I don't believe there's anything stopping us from having different line items for different groups of the same activity. For example I think we could have A in the northern part of the sea state. Or breakup mobilization like we did in the other project. Different areas. Like you said, I would hope there's some flexibility like that.
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This is, David. It's fine if [ inaudible ] wants to come on and collaborate if you like. What I would say is the point often the benefit of bundling his two knots read things too much geographically although there are situations where you will. You probably would have to be careful of is to spread out because of issues that you don't gain some efficiencies when the contractor has to re-mobilize a lot of times. If you do have to disperse the projects then my own sense is that it seems like Peter used IDIQ but you can also use it with D-B-B and come up with an approach that will optimize your pricing . That's just a quick thought.
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I think you are right. The influence of bundling decisions the most are the more similar the better in the proximity and geographic location and dispersion of the projects. Your project was geographically dispersed space on that map. We love to hear thoughts on that.
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*One?
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Yes.
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It's fine if you'd rather not. I definitely would make sure we answer your question. At the same time others are welcome to ask any additional questions. We are at the place where we are kind of opening it up and making sure we address the kinds of things that you are interested in today.
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We did have a question come up. Your line is open.
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Can you hear me?
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Yes.
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Thank you. I got an answer. What I was trying to ask even within a close geographical area there could be -- with prices and creating individual items within an estimate becomes cumbersome. You have an estimate that is -- that has a lot of items. Even if you tried to do that and another I've observed is dividing and paying for lump sum items mobilization for one engineer surface. Those sorts of things. Any tips he would have for lump sum items? Is it good to do it on a timely basis. Thank you.
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Do you want to take that. I think what I heard is how do you break down the lump sum items for payment. The way we do it we have the contractor come in and they give us their pay schedule. They cost low that schedule. They tell us okay, I bid high-level lump sums on paving, or installations depending on what we are doing. I plan to do these activities here in those activities there. This is oversimplifying but more or less once a month they bring the sheet to us and say okay, here's what we accomplish on the schedule and because it's cost loaded this is what we think we should get paid and we bring that to our inspectors and say okay, that's what's on the schedule but do they actually do that? The inspector will say yeah, they got that done. No, they were supposed to get further than they did I don't think we should pay 30% of that we should only pay 20% and so on and so forth. It's not usually that bad. There are usually too many disputes because the conversations happen before [ inaudible ] comes in. I think it's easier than working through quantities and some other detailed items and projects.
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I think your approach is a bit more of a design build oriented approach. Are you asking about design bid build? Or any kind? Lump sum.
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I think -- Peter, I think have definitely a good approach with flexibility for design bid build. I guess what I have heard from some different entities I guess would be just consider that upfront if you feel like you are going to have a variation because of unions, or other issues that create cost differences. Maybe you just don't even bundle certain things because of some of that variation is too complex. Otherwise I guess Peter, were you able to do it through IDIQ some spreading out of the way some lump sum items were paid more carefully?
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My project was unique. For bid build the one thing I could offer is some experience when we did lump sums there were times the loading office would put together a behind-the-scenes quantity associated with the lump sum. They kind of knew they were expecting to see quantities get counted before you would pay for half of it. Something the inspectors minds when they were trying to enforce it. Otherwise I'm pretty institutionalized on the design build side. Most things should work as long as you find it upfront so it's fair.
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I agree. It's something you have to put into the contract. I have a question. You mentioned AGC was okay if something -- if he didn't go overboard. Can you elaborate on that a little bit if we came to them and told them all the bridges on the west part of the state are going to get bundle next year. They would definitely have an issue with that. We just made some major project handles or crunchers with say you are gonna put me out of business I Bid that much work. Maybe we continue together or something. Long story short they would have conversations about that. When we started with some smaller bundles we hadn't really been having any issue with them. The way you're doing this you put together manageable workloads not shifting towards long contractors. It became a good relationship with them were I don't believe they've necessarily have that experience.
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I was hoping you would underscore that idea we see concern from the contractor. The truth is states can customize their bundles through that coalition Inc. with their stakeholders upfront. Dan?
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Thank you. Any other questions online? On the phone?
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It does not look like there are any other questions.
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One more comment. We have seen -- it depends on your goals and objectives and risks. We've seen projects where the agency says you must do this bridge first you can't do these two at the same time. It tends to drive the price up higher. The more taxability you can provide -- the contractor could choose what order or whatever. You start seeing lower mobilization,. Again it depends on how you structure the pricing by rich location or in general having an influence. I encourage you to look at the guide and some of the things we talk about getting input with risk assessment being covered fairly well. It's something to think about. I think it's a good segue into -- one quick question. The traditional funding sources by asset and how that restricts some opportunities you have for bundling in your budget. They don't want to share it. How that works. Any insight on that and how that can be resolved?
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[ Laughter ]
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I agree with the issue in regards to how it's resolved. It can only be resolved at the management level. We are discussing it. There is long-standing ways things work. Power struggles sound bad. It's not people arguing with each other everyone is representing their own interest. Getting together a group of forward thinking managers and saying how can we do it differently is as far as I know the only way to do it.
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We have heard frequently the wall of China used as a boundary between districts and regions. It sometimes can be challenging. It takes leadership.
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If you want to open your phone and asked directly that's fine.
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If you look in the bridge bundling guidebook there is no optimum cost. We see a whole range of delivery methods. A lot of it is driven by what you are trying to accomplish. Some bundles are driven by cost. What are you trying to optimize and it Quickstart reference will be published soon. Unique to your state and agency.
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To maximize participation from contractors and reduced size contract.
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We have heard from states where they have and old through encouraged outside contractors coming in. They would have more competition within their stay. It depends on goals and objectives. You've seen where managers have used local contractors. As one project. Individual bridges assigned to them. Do you want to add to those questions?
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What the size of bundle I would say it really is a decision based on MnDOT rules about how to bundle -- you look at Kentucky, the Kentucky program bundles were as little as two bridges and I think as many as 20 or so. They use design bid build, design build, they may have used IDIQ. Peter?
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No, not really. I answered in the chat window. There is nothing wrong with bundling small projects or midsize projects that you are to get the most efficiencies if you make the project somewhat larger you just can't make it so large it's a problem for your industry.
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Right. Right.
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I think -- he is bringing up a really good point. It's very insightful. Bigger isn't necessarily better. It depends on what you're trying to accomplish in this situation in your state. Contractor availability and geographic dispersion comes into play. You start adding travel costs and time that could up the cost and that may not be as efficient.
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Great questions. Thank you, for the input. David, I think I'm gonna turn it back over to you for your wrapup with providing resources available to help us and/or planning to reduce very soon.
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Thank you. We wanted to close with making you aware that this is an initiative that federal highways has selected with our partners across the country. Some of the local agencies associations. We have resources available to help you in addition to things like this webinar that we will be doing. If you want to find out more about what we are doing with bundling you can go to this EDC5 website and contact us. There are ways to click on different resources. What we are working on under our contract with with deployment of EDC5 thing like peer exchanges. We have them anywhere from two hours up to a day and a half. We can host different groups. We are doing targeted technical assistance where we can provide you with the hours of guidance so that we -- you can get up and running with a bundling program. We can speak at your event if you have an association. We are -- we have this webinar series. This is the first. We are developing case studies and other training. We have a couple of special opportunities for extra funding. This is done through the state transportation innovation counsel. It's up to 100,000 per year and a half to be submitted by the Council within the state. We have accelerated deployment. It's up to $1 million use on a project to deploy bundling. These are a couple of things federal highway puts out. We have a weekly newsletter that you can subscribe to. We have an innovative magazine. We can make this presentation available to those that are interested later. This is a way you can subscribe. This covers not just bundling but federal highways has been promoting through EDC and in the past. In some -- we have shared with you what is the EDC5 initiative and advanced idea. What are the benefits. In this case trying to help people stay safe and how you could extend strategic far-reaching economies of scale to non-bridge and talk about some case studies and try to answer your questions. This is what's ahead for project bundling webinar series. If you didn't receive a way to register for these I guess let us know. We will make sure you get the link to register. We have five more in this series and we can have six more after that and we like to do those based on the greatest interest and need is. We will be trying to get your input on what the future topics would be. Let me end by saying if you are interested in getting a certificate you might use for professional development hours we don't know what your state requires. If you would like to get a training certificate enter your information into the chat. I've gotten a couple of them sent to the host and you're welcome to do that if you want to do a separate request. It's fine. Let us know. We will get that certificate to you. With that I think we are good for today. I guess if you have any other closing remarks, otherwise I think we are good.
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I want to thank you for your excellent presentations. It really got me thinking about a lot of issues that come into play you need to think about what project bundling the opportunities are pretty exciting. I want to thank you, both for your time and presentation. They were awesome. I could pull up a pole and you can put input in the question. We will leave this up for a couple more minutes. That will be very helpful particularly question D. How can FHWA help you organize make project bundling a standard practice? Thank you. Thank you for to the participants for your time and great questions. We appreciate you. Thank you, everybody.
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