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Welcome to the strategic approach to product bungling with a focus on planning and capital programming. Following the presentation instructions will be given for the and answer session. Our knowledge to turn the call over applied research associate
Welcome to today's webinar as many of you know product bundling is an everyday accounts initiative and it is about taking advantage of efficiencies. Before we are going if you need close captioning is click on the button on the top of your screen and say show close captioning and it will appear on your screen. If you want to make the presentation larger you use the icon in the upper right-hand corner to make it show full-screen. We encourage everybody to be asking questions we wants to have a dialogue and discussion. Use the raise and feature you can comments in the chat or we will open up the phone lines after our presentation. And if you would like a training certificate for this one hour session please put your name and email address in the chat and we will get that certificate sent out to you. About this webinar today it has been created by the Department of Transportation and the research Associates and we are under contract to support this initiative. The views and opinions are not necessarily official policy these do not have any effect and do not find anybody in any way. The presentation is to provide some clarity to share some practices what others are doing in the world of project bundling. The first guest speaker is Garcia easy project bundling co-lead out of the office of infrastructure and David is out of research center based in Atlanta. Through all of our research we believe Indiana is probably the leading agency right now with having well-established business rules going to machine learning and we are really looking to hit the presentation on how the project bundling up on the planning process. I spent 33 years with the New York State Department of Transportation responsible for project delivery. A second series on product bundling we will highlight links to the previous webinars in the first series and in the two webinars in the series you want to provide a perspective project bundling. We covered wants that and stay my leg and how you would define success. The second webinar got more into establishing business rules and how they are tied to your goals and directives and how you can use that to improve your processes. We cover those for on-demand viewing. Today's agenda are going to build on setting goals. The benefits of having them and how they need to be tied to your agency. The main part of this webinar in the business rules striving in detail how it's elevated their practices and the benefits that they're seeing from establishing that as a business process and we will and today's webinar by going through all the resources that are available for those bundling resources available and there's a lot of things to help agencies improve bundling in their states and in your local level we want to make this as interactive as possible we have two pole questions to get you thinking about today's presentation and put things in context. What are the benefits of having a disease in these rules and raising is important to have business rules on the second lesson is multiple-choice if you will does your agency actually have business rules and place or a process for product tunneling. Where you are or where your agency is in the project bundling practice. Any consistency organized way. The question is why is a process good for place of private bundling. You think in those terms is probably lots of things can put in there why lists for project bundling are important. And on the responses were receiving so far do agencies have rules in place is what we have found in our research on project bundling. They're going to describe some of those methods and it few minutes but most do not have established documented practices in place. I will give you another 30 seconds here as they develop resources to addressing the are out there. 10 more seconds and we will close on these also think for your input is very helpful. We have a couple more questions later on. At this point I'm going to turn the presentation over for this initiative.
Sudan and greetings to all. This is business rules for project bundling where some of these benefits. Already taken part of the pole questions of some coincide with the slide here. New line with agency goals and objectives, business rules in their simplest definition business activities they help an organization achieve its goals and I will elaborate more on the slide. We have a tool to help us with this. In fact last week we had is of Desmond a recording will be available at our library that is tailored to your agency process another benefit for staff awareness, education and training so when business rules are done right they provide efficiency and consistency and predictability and many other benefits. Lastly to measure performance approval process. Aligning your project bundling process with your agency goals and objectives is a primary consideration in develop rules. And agencies long-range transportation plan and asset management plan and a statewide transportation improvement plan need to be considered in determining your project bundling business rules. Questions to ask are how can project bundling opportunities for preservation goals, what project bundling play in the capital improvement programs, there's more discussion on this topic and will be available in the soon to be published QuickStart reference and I will mention more about this later on hesitation. So how are agencies bundling there are two main approaches to bundling. Existing programs for opportunities to bundle projects for exam or conduct asset management activities and thereafter identifying the needs or on the right side I special initiative. Its use as a tool to develop a specially funded program. Or it can be used to make a case for an initiative to secure additional funding. Most approaches have their benefits, one benefiting individual products but combining them together. Use cases, on the way so that project modeling is in terms of categories and use cases. Was it mostly as an acknowledgment of what we have seen rustic country, the terms are noted, terms that we have come up with. For example maintenance and safe the project, second time there an initiative or program has resulted on the previous slide. So the seven bundling the last minute tunneling these are projects of the last-minute decisions or opportunity, catch all bundling is the one stop shopping meeting construction and last but not least advanced or optimized bonding bundling. This type of bundling is more strategic and begins early in the planning process and has well-established processes and procedures and business rules. This type of bundling leads to more results and is what we are promoting.
I'm going to present kind of an overview process for accomplishing strategic bundling. It's draws from Indiana were Lewis is going to dive deeper but it also includes other things that we have put together as part of demystifying the process and you something to kind of look at going beyond the abstract and the narrative.
We have a question that had maybe best if we address that will. You're asking are the use cases should they be considered order mind when you're thinking about bundling work or maybe take an approach in answering.
Should they be, I can can you repeat that?
She's asking rather use cases things should be running when you bundling work?
It's good to recognize them and understand the real world as a means of identity where they might be pots ultimately were looking for the most advanced strategic approach to bundling. Mostly just to recognize and all acknowledge that they are out there I don't know if that answers the question.
I think it's a great question this emphasizes why we think having business rules or processes in place is important in the agency because he was through in advance that lays out is it going to be in those categories is it going to be asset management approach and whatever that approaches, have question about they want to see this laid out and I don't know if that's a lesson in the requirements that you have a business process in place for project bundling. I know having a more structured approach would be better off I would let you add to that and let you get back to your slides I think your steps are probably going to address some of these questions.
It is not a requirement I just think that we are encouraging it because we know that if there is going to be more consistent, all the different offices can coordinate debtor and you will realize the benefit more routinely than if it is an ad hoc approach but what federal highways will want to see is just the typical project delivery things that are address, within every project there are federal sure you are aware of and those kind of things remain whether you have a bundle or not. Just to move on with the chart here I want to give a sense of the why or the motivation that is right in front of us right now images Inc. for yourself, and it doubles from the amount of funding that were going to have to deliver them I asked herself every told to be efficient in delivering them well. Your system your transportation system I just want to point out there's lots of motivation right now I want to say regarding this chart we said at the beginning this is a strategic process and were going to talk about what is strategic about it and how can a process like this help you become consistent glad to see the answer in the calling that people understand that it creates consistency. The strategic part here, with this process you can reach back all the way back to programming early in the way that your agency addresses projects and potentially see benefits of bundling throughout the process during design during development fermenting and so forth it is all part of looking for the efficiencies of bundling strategically early and if you can connected to your asset management processes it is strategic because you are the tackling projects that bring because they have been selected through asset management approach. I guess this graphic is in our getting started reference and it shows as I mentioned in no review for strategic process. Typically follows three steps that were going to walk through and it relies on the ossification of project types an individual input data that allows you to decide where bundling the most effective. This process or the one that you tweak will help you walk through is best for your agency as you modify it. So let's look at step one which is really just deciding so if you as an agency decide that you're going to do that includes listing your candidate bundling candidate project and putting them together with all that data that I just mentioned. Consideration to moving to the next steps and you're also on the left side there you may want to go ahead and start thinking about your own organization entire doing bundling and what might you add to your process that will really bring out the benefits of bundling from the very outset. That is step one. If we go to the right side of the chart there the key as I mentioned through the key components that created the greatest impact on how it bundles how well a designer can deal with bundles and can bring the efficiencies is the project location and the project type. Kind of beginning to put into buckets with that information sent 3rd, with some final tentative products that you decide and applied to bundling there's going to be some details that you can find this reference and our guide that will tell you which projects are probably not good candidate project once you down to your final candidate there ready for you to consider kind of the details of the bundle. On the left side you are kind of looking at what you currently are doing where the projects come through into this step. Do you have a cost model the best bundling efficiency and other questions like that go into a cost model which they actually have their State University put together a model based on previous projects. It is a tool to help you think about what's bundling sizes. The most efficiency and so then your candidate will come into this step and begin to be considered for bundling. You may have districts where you need to consider them as this bundle right, but the human aspect to it and decide and make judgments about whether you have your bundle put together well yet. Consider the bundling size that makes sense. Come up with a final set of projects once again. Take the bundle and turn it into a contract with the kinds of detail that will help the contractor or it could be the designer or the contractor help you create the greatest efficiency. That brings efficiency and design and construction things that help the contractor be more efficient with his staff and his workforce in the field, more flexible Ted is kind of the end of the generic process. He's going to tell you more about the details of what they are doing.
What level do you think you work for an agency what your agency is at work you work for an agency what do you think they are and really level I if you go down this you're not implementing human development stage and level III more kind of the demonstrating stage for your assessing and trying to prove it. Five is becoming institutionalized and six you're so far advanced you're taking performance measurements and improving your processes. We will have to see where agencies are most of it is at the lower end at this point and question number four is if you're using project bundling when are you making the decision is as early in the planning process when the asset management, is it more when it gets to design and to talk about project bundling we are also talking about environmental analysis or design pieces not just construction so easy typical bridges we think there is a huge benefit to the country if locals can start bundling together more to gain some efficiencies. I am going to remind everybody if you would like a certificate to put your name and email address in the chat, if you have questions raise your hands we will open up for questions at the end of Lewis presentation and I failed to mention there's a download part available so take a look at those downloads and grab what you want from the download pond. It looks like most people are formal development stage I think that is consistent across the country. There's a lot of room for improvement which is why redoing this webinar series and grade them on deciding multiple structures, doing design, capital planning improvement is very good early on and often we see it is done later in the process. Local ridges and we some bundling and planning and design. Thank you everyone for your input I love the interaction. Keep adding your names for the training certificate.
Thanks Dan and thanks David I want to go into more detail of the lessons learned I have to give him a hard time he must have voted five for us so I have some PR work to do this I just kind of wanted to give a background for Indiana. We are kind of in the middle of the states in the middle of the U.S. crossroads of America so we have 65 going north and south Interstate 69 you see here in the segments about 2 1/2 years they will get that out of the way and that will be finished. A lot of truck traffic comes to Indiana one of the major hubs for FedEx and credibility development and stuff like that and that has been dominant for quite a few years. One of the biggest keys that we learned is having the business rules when he first started off having a lot of lessons learned we had one state that is added to bundle everything into two contracts and I think within minutes of that being posted on the website I think the Commissioner was getting phone calls saying you have bigger vendors we had to take a step back and develop business and one of the other things, or asset rules on my cycle tying into our bundle rules and you will see that here in a few minutes how we are going to use that data to really create bundles to optimize we pretty much do three types of bundles the entire route we are going to pick up mobility safety aspects. Signs and are going to go in and do everything in that segment and pick up every issue that we have and try to optimize our process and getting everything located. Geographic locations are going to a region or county or county area and picking up bridge deck overlays and then we're going to go in and do a 15 pipe liners or 20th index overlays and build that relationship up and is on contractor doing that type of work. One of the things Wheelers into is corridors. Is there an interstate corridor about local routes smaller highways and we had major pushback from our contractor saying it's really hurting us the other firms that they really like if they don't like to do state work so he has to take a step back on that aspect. We had a very expensive experience we did a corridor where we didst 20 miles of painting work with and we had three deck replacements and the deck replacements need enclosures but the work was going to be night work so they could have done in the night. Call out saying they only need to close the road around the bridges so the contractor decided to going to call it out, I'm going to close and to major solar reinforcement and stuff like that and really increase the cost honestly had to let that kind of improve on that side of it. Geographic borders one of the things that we did when we started developing bundle rules and stuff we sat down with our contractor saying what works for you guys and what will save you guys time and money and they came back saying 15 or 20 or 25 miles is their primary if you go beyond 25 or 30 miles most likely it's going to run the job for them they will have to have two if you have on a euro or three miles all that guy is going to be doing is driving so watch the mileage. One of the challenges was we had six regions and artistry is believe it is the Great Wall of China between each one of those so they didn't want to look within half a mile or mile. Not being afraid to look beyond the borders of one of the things we have done is seen learning aspects that you will see here in a little bit that really broke down the boundary limits. We have some strong unions in our state if you're going to do a project in their region 10 or 15 miles outside the region you have to plan for that aspect of it so really paying attention to the location of unions. If you're doing a payment project really looking at the plant location and making sure there are some competitions for the plants. Both teams would have a location that would be between the projects. Try to find a way to make it concurrent work so they can go in and send the MOT for one project and trying to create a factory type system and also looking at capacity for the contractors. Is not a new technology but a lot of our contractors haven't picked that up. So make it so we have the capacity for that product. And also make it so that you take into account the story bridges and railroad bridges working with the railroads always seems to add one or two years our product timeline so make it so that if you have some normal goods don't include historic goods or documents of your equipment. Making sure that you bundle those the same way. They can feed into each other and save cost. One of the biggest things that we have seen is the MOT but you also have the product saving money on the product material so if you can bundle 10 or 15 30 inch pipes together you will get a better product and if you do one 30 inch and 140 inch 150 and so feeding into that aspect of it. When we started looking at quarters we took a step back and said what type do you want to give up to make sure we don't affect the spending money on something that doesn't need to be spent on. Also taking the time to look at what we can tell the public were going to come and do this work and were not going to be back for five years or 15 years or 20 years, taking the time to step back and figure out that aspect. However you want to give up or move back and forth for the project in the bridge project the bridge of and meet that condition and get that is aspects of it. One of the things we looked at was really trying to get business rules documented in this presentation it was emphasized to us how are getting this documented. And one of the things we first started bundling and was designed for being designed and we had issues we have two or three designers work on it and one designer to put all the plans together. One of the biggest disadvantages doing it at the end giving more work done so are going to combine 15 overlays going to save $1 million or $2 million that was an opportunity we could have taken. They will approve our asset condition. It will take advantage of the cost savings and selecting a team to do the design. Instead of putting out five small liners are going to put out one contact for one team to do it so one of the questions we get asked from other states is are you hurting the smaller contractors and designers and what we are seeing is the answer is no they are teaming up together we might be losing some of the smaller guys but they are getting more work now from the team so there working as a team tour three design firms are going together to get one of the bigger projects. Contractors are teaming up to get bigger projects we will give them a lot better opportunity in that aspect but and like I said the biggest advantage is we are getting the opportunity of bundling and seeing the cost savings and getting the cost savings back into the program. We do our project call every year so we have a five year program. The teams are looking at mobility safety products and also you will see we are using machine learning and AI to create bundles both right now the district teams are saying I have a road project is 15 miles so the reaching out to the British side of the office. How many bridges you have and can you move those in or do you want to add them to my bundle and also there looking at the gotten by liners in the county or district and need that we can create a bundle and save money on that aspect as well. The advantages of the machine learning is Dan and those guys can show you guys but right now we're working within the developer so were taking 2728 and 29 of our program what we think we need based off of our lifecycle and asset needs and were taking that into the machine learning and it will allow us to say you can create a better project and get a better bundle so I'm excited about that cost saving in that program saving. One of the other things is making sure that, we have to have 51% of the contract so making sure that the leaders used to managing of the contracts. We have made a mistake where we had one of our specialty contractors it was 52% of the contract and they had the maintenance of the contractors they were more managed by other contracts so if you're going to do a bunch of painting or tech overlays stay in a similar product and make sure they don't have to manage other contractors. Then like I said looking at some of the regions we have some pockets where we have limited contractors kind of looking at that aspect of it saying we can do a 20 or $30 million contract over here a lot of people asked you can only do bundles for large projects and now, we have done classic projects, goods projects, joint and guardrail and stuff like that, run projects, patching, so you can still get almost $4 million worth of savings even bundling some of the smaller products. Like I was saying using the machine learning we would get all the projects and we would set us up and then we would sit down and start drawing circles and it would take us 2 to 3 weeks to develop bundles. Using machine learning we are getting that done in a day and tweaking those over the next week or so so it is saving us time and money in the other thing was were starting to look at three years. I love my team but having them tried to look over a three-year window it is tough. Trying to over three years of lines to move projects up and back end in and out it is difficult so you need machine learning and being able to look over three years is going to be major time-saving for us as well. They're finding more bundles for us. Like I said we have that Great Wall of China between each of the districts regions and a lot of times they struggled looking beyond the boundaries and reaching out to the group.
Thank you for sharing your experience and has been very valuable hearing loss of the real issues you have addressed entire practice has evolved to using machine learning and analyzing the data. I know my experience back in your state we have 11 we: regions and each is a separate one. Probably struggle with the same issue we do have a couple questions and their and they are great questions something we haven't really discussed but the use of visualization tools and creating your bundles do you do that in Indiana seems like that's a great suggestion. Use of visualization tools when you're identifying your bundles for products you I guess map it out?
We do, we map it out and machine learning really maps it out for us so we use our highways to kind of see where the bundles are and verify the driving distance and where the plants are located.
My understanding is the latest work by that machine learning group allows you to circle projects to determine like in other words you can choose different geographies and then it would do the machine learning to determine if that was a good collection of products.
Yes. And it will allow you to reduce the length and the distance is also the ones that say this is going to be an urban area and it might mess up that timeframe that the contractors are telling us about.
It seems like that is a logical use to help determine that. We have another question about design review has it been used for staffing, I do know that we have done case studies were agencies actually have bundled the design and made smaller bundles for construction so I think that's a great question you want to think on how you can bundle we have seen bundling in the permitting process it can be done at different stages of the product development process that helps you identify some of those. I'll know if you have anything from Indiana's experience for denying reviews or agency staffing and so forth?
We have done it both ways. Trying to objecting on permits we have had to work with our permitting agencies saying these all standalone so we don't hit some of the issues and combining and stuff like that. Some great approvals for that as well.
I think we've identified three main areas for efficiencies and one of those is resources more efficient use of agency existing resource the time and cost savings, you can create one contract and it's easier than creating 10 smaller products, the level of effort there is some savings and a better use of resources and then they also look at we have time for one more session another great question about using federal funds, time is of I think this is related to programs for approval any issues that you, that address?
We haven't been a lot of it is occasion so we sit down with the locals and ask what we are doing and once the product was going to be. We have done some task bundles and stuff we have not had any issues.
Federal rules probably don't ability don't change bundling there are some that have increased product bundling and the authorization bills and I'm not sure Bill will have that are not.
I think it has only been encouraged that, in the last few bills that bundling be considered especially for bridges.
I think you said it right it is not required it is encouraged and it's like any other project that follows the same processes and procedures.
I'm going to turn this over to go through some resource for everybody if you want a certificate your name in the chat and take a look at the file share and, there's one resources in their and reach out if you need any help we can talk about these topics for hours and days. I'm going to let you do a quick recap of the resources that are available
We have actually run out of time the time has been extended are those that can save and I will live through this next action here. Available resources are listed on the slide to begin the project bundling website. Within the website you will see links to the guidebook that was developed recently. We talked about the self-assessment tool there's a resource database there's a number of case studies and on-demand webinars. Series 1 and we also started to. Is also a local public agency online training course and the next slide will go into more detail I will go through very fast. This is the first starting point to go through the resources so on the right side of this slide here there is a fact, there's a call a bundles facilities overview and that is to click on that takes you to an office of innovative program delivery website which has a world of resources. We talked about these offices tool this is the result of the tool and the information told you I will not details but we had a workshop this weekend the recording of their work for be available very soon. There is a database of mobile a world of information and we have completed webinars during the last years here. First series is courted. We are starting the webinar series of them have been completed and today we have programming. We have three additional webinars in the new year, January, March and May and you can see the titles there. Supplement to the guidebook we have a QuickStart reference which will go a little to into project bundling. We have a number of briefs here, you can see the different titles and frequently asked lessons, overcoming so you should be hearing, this should be available to the public very soon. It's a college course that takes you through everything you want to know about project bundling and it will hopefully be made available very soon.
And his presentation is available in the download audit it has all the links in it if you want to save them is Labor Day is feelings to all these references and resources that we mentioned. I want to thank David and Ramiro and Louis for sharing your experience and I want to thank all the participants for your great input and feedback. We are out of time but please do feel free to follow-up on any questions you have or look at any of these resources you need help moving your agent along do you have any closing remarks?
No, it is a big thanks to everyone for taking the time to meeting with us and encourage you to take a vantage of the resources that are available let us know if you need any specific assistance, contact us and we are glad to help in any way we can
Thank you everyone for your part patient webinar is a turn. Thank you.
And thank you ladies and gentlemen that does our today, you may now disconnect.
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