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Good day and thank you for standing by. Welcome to the project bundling advancing project bundling making the business case. Now we will turn it over to your host Dan your host Dan D'Angelo.
Thank you, Henan. We are having three on the books in six more to be planned. Glad you could join us. The call will be recorded online for you to share with your coworkers. The poll questions are on the screen, if you can do that and the presentation toward your perspective. I will close it down and 10 more seconds and then 10 more seconds and then we jump into the presentation.
I'm going to go to the presentation. We can open the pull at the end at the end of the presentation.
As I mentioned, this is the third in a series of six a series of six planned webinars these are followed up with an additional additional six webinars and we get down to the working details on how to manage your projects. working details on how to manage your No matter where we are we need improvement. We are focusing on making space on my project bundling is necessary and we will cover some case studies and then we provide resources for you to help you in your efforts. I do have some housekeeping roles. If you would like to see better presentation, a larger image of the slide. You see the four arrows and you can click click on that and it will fill up your screen with the PowerPoint. We would like you to use the the chat pod and you open up the line as the operator mentioned and there's a couple of points over the phone line and if you have questions put it in the chat pod. If you want a certificate of training having a long with your address a little disclaimer the content is from the presenter's perspective. It does not necessarily reflect U.S. D.O.T. or our presenters from Kentucky transportation Cabinet in the Ohio Kentucky transport Association.
We have great presenters today.
I apologize. I just want to do a check a check in on the closed captioning. I'm just going to ask Maria if you can check into that. I do not see it. Maybe it is working. Do you see it?
No. I did I did not notice. So why don't we just keep going and Maria can work on that in that in the back ground thank you.
Good catch, David.
Thank you for trying to get that out we have a bunch of great great presenters today. Romero Garcia is a project bundling cold lead. David is the other cold lead and he will be speaking and doing case studies and making project one and cover short case studies and we will go into much more detail and we will be presenting that in the bridge in Kentucky effort which is a pretty is a pretty impressive effort that started from nothing to a full-fledged program. We have people from Ohio and they will shows how they make the case for their efforts in Ohio. Dan D'Angelo for those that you don't that you don't know me I'm with applied with the [ Indiscernible low volume ]. We will talk about advanced project bundling and how you can advance project funding. David will get into some case studies to build on the local and state level and we have two agencies present their program. The Ohio bridge partnership program and then we will and about resources. And how to advance their project bundling efforts. Hearing that I will turn it over to Romero Garcia. Let me know when you are ready to go.
Thank you, Dan and greetings to all. The focus of this Webinar is on advancing Project Bundling and making a business case.
Why bundle? Project bundling can streamline environmental analysis and permits, design contracting and construction. It allows agencies to capitalize on economies to scale to increase efficiency and supports greater collaboration during project delivery and construction. Why bundle? It saves costs with shared features with leveraging expertise and economies of scale. It saves time. Project bundling delivered strategic program solutions by streamlining various project delivery requirements such as delivery requirements such as environmental agreements and project bundling saves resources. Using a single contract award for several for several similar projects they declined construction and phased procurement time. Project bundling comes in many shapes and forms. The various categories and use cases for bundling and we will talk about some of these during this Webinar. First of all, however, I would however, I would like to share some clarifications about bundling of projects. Next slide. Project bundling provides opportunity for all size firms. In other words nobody gets left out. There are large bundles and there are small are small bundles. There are opportunities to subcontract up to 70% of the work. By regulations they must provide opportunity to all size firms. So project bundling does not change anything, it's like any other project. Next slide please. Additionally the requirements unbundled projects are the same as with any other federal project. There are goal setting considerations contracting situations. Depending on the kind of contract and there contract and there is monitoring. And again, project bundling does not change any federal requirements and there is opportunity for all. Nevertheless, in the future Webinar we are focusing special attention on the small business element of of project bundling work for now I just wanted to share this information with you. So, in the next slide Dave has a local agency case studies. David?
Thank you. And thank you everyone for joining us. I think one of the questions we are asked most often and we are and we are already bundling is what can you show us that would help us make the business case for bundling. Essentially people are saying, show me the money. As opposed to, claims and so forth. I guess the point of today is going going to be yes there are, as was mentioned, cost savings and time savings time savings to be had often. The truth is bundling is not just about dollars and it's not a one-size-fits-all tool and it's not about a one size construction. It's about using bundling to accomplish your agency wants to do. Let's get into that a little bit. As an example, part of being able to a business case it is a more detailed understanding of how bundling works in your state or region. What project size and bundle size what are the market conditions in proximity of project. Part of the transportation who are the leaders with the routine approach to project bundling and getting out all that they expect. Based on past projects and projecting how the projects would work if they were bundled in the a greater understanding of how bundling works for bridges and road where projects and and safety projects and so forth. Most of what Indiana D.O.T. did was done by their joint transportation research program. Most of that is transferable to to your agency and you can probably tweak it somewhat for your area for your competition and so they created a cost model and some business rules built around what they learned from their study in order to make decisions about bundling. Is it going to be this work or something else. Or use it during the standardized design and so forth I think that is probably the best things that you can do. Just take a look at what Indiana D.O.T. has done and see how has done and see how you can apply that. I guess where they are taking that next is the last world talks about utilize machine learning and in the end D.O.T. is piloting a machine learning approach where the bundles will be selected based will be selected based on the business rules by algorithms that are involved in artificial intelligence and machine machine learning. They are projecting that they still.
To see over 107 million dollars of savings to be bundling over the next next four years of their program for the state of Indiana. With machine learning they are expecting to see an additional significant amount in savings and it reduces the amount of time required by the staff to put the bundles together. It's pretty exciting and we are happy to share that share that with you.
I wanted to highlight in terms of the business case, it can also be that you're trying you're trying to accomplish what Missouri was doing. Their program where they had safety improvement funds. In the had a budget of 24 million. It wasn't so much that they wanted to wanted to save but they wanted the most for their money. What they did is they used used to designed build approach and they stayed within the $24 million to maximize the amount of safety improvement or expected reduction in crashes crashes and fatalities and to also get the right right service light and limited maintenance gusts and to minimize impacts to the public. You can see it was not just driven by the desire to save just driven by the desire to save but about other goals with making the business case with your leadership. A little bit about and Missouri has what they call, additional applicable standards program where they can introduce innovation by allowing specifications from other agencies, as long as they meet as long as they meet certain criteria. They will incorporate the surrogate.
From others in these three three areas. They met their requirements and they were potentially better than what Missouri was expecting. So they introduce innovation to bundling and through using design build. You look at the crash modification factors Missouri basically decided they would allow for various safety treatments and they wanted to maximize the benefit by trying to get the most reduction in crashes and for using the modification factors for different factors for different treatments. This chart quickly represents how if you look at this particular example. This is an intersection, as an example that used three crash modification treatments and factors in order to optimize the number of crashes reduced which is in the farthest right column. Missouri actually used this approach design build. Whatever brought the greatest crash and reduction in fidelity for reduction in fidelity for the money was re-rated higher. I think this is a great example of how you can how you can use other goals that you might have. And for this strategic safety to drive your your business case. So with that I'm going to hand to hand it over to our friends in Kentucky to talk about their preaching Kentucky program. Royce.
Hello, can you hear me?
Yes. Thank you for having us my name is Royce Meredith and I I am the Kentucky transportation manager and owned by Tony Hundley. For this program we brought on people to help I don't want to get into it and and I want to let you know that they helped us with our goals so I'm going to jump on in. We participated in a lot a lot of these and hopefully this is helpful to you I'm going to hand it over to Tony and he will talk more in detail. We will go back and forth. The preaching Kentucky program it was a goal to replace some of the replace some of the worst bridges we had across the state and our charge is to restore the core structures to safety passages as quickly and efficiently as we could. Bundling was a tool we use to help accomplish a tool we use to help accomplish that goal. We still have single project and small bumbles. Our charge from the administration is not to alienate our strong strong smaller state contractors. We have larger bundles and smaller bundles. And we still kept going. As you can see from this slide, most of our pictures from this slide, most of our pictures we restored were on the smaller side. A lot of County bridges. There were no interstate bridges in this program or major river or major river crossings. About 25% of the bridges were on dead-end roots. A lot of bridges in the Appalachian Mountains. We had quite a few bridges that served quite a few homes. There bridges that served quite a few homes. There is only one way in or out. The one thing is they were pretty much the last bridge that crossed before they they got home at night. We want to make sure they are saved for school buses, garbage trucks, et cetera. And even though they were small they combined in total for 1 million crossings per day. I did want to make the point that it's not necessarily a bundling plan but we do use bundling as a tool. The administrative priority when it started, it was a priority. They wanted us to get going as quickly as we can to take care of the backlog of inventory. We had a list of bridges to work from. We had to find a way to get them developed quickly and efficiently and we took advantage of some of the programmatic benefits that could be realized when you have these new bridges to work on. This was not only was not only bundling construction contracts but bundling every aspect through construction. Through environmental approval and all of that stuff we were patching together and to sharpen things as much as we could. I will turn it turn it over to Tony.
As you can see here bundling was a tool for the program, along with another feature. In a lot of ways we will we will talk about bundling and individual projects. We utilized various delivery mechanisms. We design projects that were put out as individual projects and put out as bundles, as well as a design build contract that we put out that included 106 bridges and design build contract that we put out that included 106 bridges and early on we had a lot of individual projects while we were getting the bundling underway and we were developing our bundling plan. We put out about 29 or 30 bundled product.
To the 15 bridges and then the large design. product.
To the 15 bridges and then the large design.
We talked about project development. The next is an area where in all honesty we saw the greatest benefit from a cost and time standpoint. It was not just packaging from contract administration but developing bundling mechanisms only environmental side and again one thing that's very important is we didn't hold or tie our hands together and our hands together and try to put out as a bundling construction. We would bundle other projects differently than we did in the construction phase. Talking about drilling into some of those areas. We sat down with people about dropping the program charter and it would give us defiance on how on how we would utilize resources with different agencies. We had several restored bridges in the program. It works with the preservation office and to group those historic bridges and meet with them go through the process of setting of setting the scope as bundles and it actually allows there to be some trade off discussion between an understanding when we had a fact and when had no effect. Another area that was very important some fish important some fish and wildlife side. So we had agreement with Fish and Wildlife Service that we would do batch biological opinions. We would access those by geographic area, water area and efficiency we would send those in and they would get 20, 30, 40 or 50 in a month to review. They were able to focus and look focus and look at them together as a group. And that was huge. In the charter really is what allowed us to to do that. We dropped the GDP and it was acting as an arm of of the cabinet. We were dealing with GDP and dealing directly with those agencies. Just wanted to make that point.
Another area that was important was utility on the utility side. We have bridges all over the state and a large regional company small New Jersey company where we were able to go to those small utility companies and talk to them about multiple bridges and their territory and talk to them about multiple bridges and their territory and that allows the small utility companies to allow us some creative approaches and if they had a challenging utility situation at one bridge, at one bridge, we would help take care of that whereas we had an area where there was something where we were able to take it care of an area with a tight schedule. Large utility companies, power companies, companies, and gas company. We met with them and we developed a relationship and and the dialogue and they bought into the program and we were talking about multiple bridges. Railroad coordination is another. We had railway bridges in in the program and we were able to pull local and southern railroad in and talk to them not just about one bridge at a time but all of the bridges we will be doing in bridges we will be doing in the program. We were able to get efficient communication. And definitely we had efficient munication. And as mentioned earlier talking about predesigned elements. That is a more common thought area for bundling. We sat down with the cabinet and worked with bridging design. We wanted to expand their cattle goal of standard design elements for small bridges. So we developed a whole series that really allowed us to minimize excavation and highway acquisition on the project. We added to the project. By adding a 3-foot wide box gin22. It allowed contractors to start to build common elements and they are saying, it over and over and over again. We had an extremely aggressive delivery and we delivered about 350 bridges and 300 months. We had an extremely aggressive an extremely aggressive delivery schedule. And assessments and all the field group was was all matched. We put design teams in regions so they would be working the bridges in a be working the bridges in a given area. And we use bundling often. As you get into bundling this is an area where it starts as an individual project and to go into bundling we wanted to understand how to do it. We met understand how to do it. We met with FW way and we had a peer review to get information from Ohio and Georgia and other states and we took the cabinet on on the road. We did five around the state and we met with contractors and suppliers and we brought the states DVD Offense with us to promote TBD participation. It can be a challenge for that kind for that kind of work. In those forums, we were able to provide samples and case studies of what a bundle might look like and get feedback from the contractors. The most important thing important thing you have is there is no one-size-fits-all. This gives us some variety that helps maximize contract participation. One other thing they are very clear on and fairly obvious. Don't mix your rehab with your replacements. That was something they wanted to make sure you understood that we talked about bundling aspects. We will not get into detail in this presentation. The first bundling guide is a resource with a lot of considerations to think about when you go through bundling. I will go bundling. I will go through those considerations. I will go through some of that in the cost couple of case studies. We had six numbers around the state. We can can see there is a variety of bundles just from the geographic location. One thing that was important for us is as we got the good feedback from contractors and we started putting out projects we continue to evolve to evolve our delivery mechanism. One example of that was large bundles which we defined as six bridges bridges or more, we give them two extra weeks and extra weeks and we gave them five weeks to put together. And that allow them time to put it together. But on what we realized and we got feedback from contractors. In doing that, we would have overlap. We would contractors. In doing that, we would have overlap. We would have next month bundles while we were finally getting to this month bundles. Put a strain on the contractors. We went to our site site and we only did large bundles on the contract administration side and I think you'll hear think you'll hear more on and I'm focused on this. The things you would.
To see and the efficiency from an owners perspective. We really thought we would get that and in coordinating in coordinating with local officials with road closures and detours and and things like that. And contractors we give as much flexibility as flexibility as we could. That was the single greatest pitcher. It was an important factor. The contractor and efficiency of the familiarity of similar plans and knowing what what is expected with bridges in one bundle.
A couple of case studies that speak to the bundling benefit from. This is a bundling one for us in the Cleo Greene area, those are over Highway District 10 and 12 12 in Kentucky. It's a rural part of Kentucky. There's not a lot of contractors we had a lot of bridges that really needed work in that corner of in that corner of the state. Early on we were seeing that the bids were not as contended and we had one bridge in this bundle when we tried to put out out a project and it got no bidders on it. So in trying to address to address that concern with the competition, we put out a larger bundle out across those two districts. When we do it do it and when we have good competition in multiple vendors. What ends up happening is. To contractors bid together to give us the competition. For the bid. We have seen that and we also focused are designed build contract and that part of the state for the same reason. The large concept help deal with a competition challenge we had. The next example we have is in the more central part of Kentucky between Louisville in this area. Early on we put out the bundle and with the they were coming 15% over budget. We decided we thought we could leverage a large bundle in this area. We put out this 13 bridge bundle to try to get competition. One of the values of putting out the bundle is it allowed us to deal with challenges we had. One of the bridges the bridges was closed and we told the contractor that bridge is closed and we have another bridge that that impacts schools in the contractors city was someone. They don't care if you do it this summer or next summer but you have to do it in the summer. And we the summer. And we left it to the contractor to do it as they intended. This was a case study in efficiency for the owner. The two highway districts decided on one section based on two crews and the contractors two construction crews. They followed them around, I followed them around. And it allowed the contractors crews to gain efficiency from bridge to bridge and inspecting crews as well. One other aspect that I do want to bring up up because it takes pack to the procurement. It was an area where the contractor was able to leverage and that got the rebar and use the areas they had and and they were able to get that efficiency and materials. We think it contributed to the overall contract with that, those are two case studies that we have a talk about the big lessons learned we have from from bundling. Be prepared. We came into it in the beginning in the beginning of the program and we spent about five months developing a bundling approach and the bundling plan and getting the agencies lined up and everyone on the same page. In the meantime we are putting out individual projects. Once we started bundling we worked on bundling we worked on leveraging bundling. We have a lot of different bundles and we have pretty much every contract in the state of Kentucky that has built bridges has built the built the Kentucky bridge. We maximize the input from the construction industry to help us in this program. That was important and efficiency is an area we can be better with.
Overall the pace of the program and program and sort of how much administration put on that in order to get moving appropriately, we did not have the opportunity to not have the opportunity to optimize our construction model. We do not feel our bundles are not as optimized as they could be they could be but they gave us a value. It was easier bundling. So far, we have seen a 10% 10% saving in construction contact costs. Other things that brought us more savings as far as a savings as far as a reduced scope and reduce the right-of-way but his first bundling is concerned I would say, it was a 10% or it was a 10% or 15% savings. The other place we know we saved we saved a lot of money was on the preconstruction side. Using the battling and bundling the preconstruction side, design and utilities were in it and the 60% savings on on those aspect with historical prices of similar bridges of historical size and shape. It's been rather massive. I think bundling is a great tool that can be used and should be used in the be used and should be used in the right place and I think you have a large group of bridges and that's one way to do it. That's all we have do it. That's all we have for today. I think we got in just under just under the wire. If anyone wants to ask questions, I don't know what the rules are. Will we do that now or do that that now or do that later?
Let's take time. There are no questions and the operator can explain.
And once again, as a reminder, if you wish to ask you wish to ask a question signal by pressing star one on your telephone keypad and the voice prompt will indicate when your line is your line is open. Once again that is star one.
While we are waiting for the phone for the phone lines I have one question I thought on your last lesson learned was more just a construction cost savings. He went to that very well. When you get the preconstruction does that the preconstruction does that parallel construction contracts or did you bundle permitting together and then from that permitting action environmental and then treat them separately separately or differently when you bundle the preengineering or or preconstruction activities and.
Yeah. What we did is we had this catalog of bridges and we were developing our bundling plan for construction but we were in we were in the project development phase. We would bundle and batch projects for the environmental approval and agency coordination, section 106 or section seven approvals. We would bundle those without a constant decision on how we would bundle their construction. We did disconnect those and in fact we bundled projects differently from an environmental perspective and from our utility coordination perspective. Or that we did from from our design perspective. We utilize bundling.
Great. That's very interesting and we need to keep that that in mind that we can bundle preconstruction differently than construction and thank you it was a great presentation. Operator, and he calls on the line?
No questions in queue at this time. We could spend two or We could spend two or three days going through your program. We will open up the lines to questions at the end here so I will turn this over to Ohio D.O.T. and Andrea if you want to introduce your team and you will take will take the lead?
Thank you. Thank you very much. On behalf of the Ohio Department of Transportation we thank you for the opportunity to purchase a paid today. I am the administrator for the office of the office of local program. We have Tim Keller who is our O.D.O.T. engineer and Justin Payton who is the program manager for the Ohio Ridge partnership program and is also in the office of in the office of local program at the department. And so we have three different small portions of our program that we will that we will present. And we have varying levels of expertise. The three of us will present and look forward to hearing your questions. I would like to congratulate Kentucky on an excellent presentation and great job on Kentucky on an excellent presentation and great job on your program. You really did a great job administration your bridge plan. In Ohio, you can see here this is a map that we had developed with bridges we built in our state. Likewise, we have an aggressive aggressive program as well. About seven years ago our governor was John Kasich. He gave us very aggressive initiatives to advance forward. So, in October of 2014, he shared with us, and the Ohio General assembly, that we would be getting $100 million to replace or repair the bridges over the course of a 3-year. . It was very aggressive for us. Above and beyond what we were already doing with us. Above and beyond what we were already doing with the bridges and the local partners in our state. While we usually give $320 million on an annual basis, this was in addition to what we were doing. We do have a large number of bridges. We are second in the country the country to Texas. And so we have a lot lot of responsibility and so what we try to focus on wear those that met the federal definition of a bridge. And while those that met the federal definition of a bridge. And while we have a better than national average with our bridges, we have a lot of them that are always in need that are always in need of repair. Our emphasis on the locals in our state. And the number of bridges in desperate need of repair. We wanted to make sure that we were partnering with the locals, which we did. And we worked with them very closely very closely to serve their immediate needs. And that was the interest of our executive leadership at our our state level and at our department level. One of the things we set out set out to do was to be very quick about this and try to be very effective. Solutions, as Kentucky mentioned in the project development season, all the way through construction. With that aggressiveness that we were charged with we had to keep it very simple. Tim Tim and Jeff you see how they selected bridges and why they selected bridges and why that was important to be effective as effective as we bundle and consider how we can get more bridges replaced as quickly as possible. We partnered with the locals. In our office, we consider ourselves to be the advocate for the locals when it comes to transportation. We work very closely with O.D.O.T. County engineer Association and our municipalities and their villages and all across the state. This helps improve County bridges and and municipal bridges. The program was advanced and we had other partners that were involved. Of course, you have contractors Association which would were involved. Of course, you have contractors Association which would eventually be those responsible parties for building bridges and insuring that it was in safe safe and good operating order. The Ohio Public Association, we worked closely with them and we helped support the program and I will get into that here in the next couple of slides. And our NPO's, we have 17 and peels across the state. They are responsible for our large areas and because they get federal allocation we had to make sure we were partnering with them as well. We had a lot of people in the mix that we had to coordinate with from a coordinate with from a political perspective and a partnership perspective.
So this is what we set we set out to accomplish. We built 228 bridges. We built them in six years. Right now we have 223 that are complete. We can elaborate more on that later in the presentation. The expectation was to deliver safe expectation was to deliver safe quality bridges. And you would do that in any case. It's always our objective to have a state transportation system. We work not going to spend a lot of time developing projects because we had to take advantage of effective environmental solutions, utility, memorandums of agreement, and those sort of things to move the project forward. And we wanted to get the project through construction. This is we wanted to get the project through construction. This is the design build process and retails did sell the projects and bundles or packages. In some cases the highest number of bridges we had number of bridges we had was six. We sold some and packages of two or three. The most popular bundle sizes and we had a lot of other bridges we sold as well. We hired consultants to support the effort. We hired a project management consultant and I was happy to get approval from FHWA. We had several project development projects that help bide support from environmental processes and purchasing real estate. Those difficult developments we are charged with completing. We had We had a multidisciplinary team. We had weekly and monthly meetings to ensure we were advancing and being very aggressive with it. So that's the administrative facts behind our program. Funding was a challenge and I saw in the in the polls earlier when many of the participants identifying what they feel the challenges were is the funding. David said, show me the money. It was a hurdle for this program and we had to and we had to be innovative in the ways we were seeking out dollars. Eligible bridges were funded with 100% federal funds. Initially no local match required and we moved forward very quickly. We did have a $120 million and that came from federal Garvey bonds. What that means is essentially we borrow the money and we are paying it back over it back over a ten-year. . So that was Of course, there is an 80 twentieths split. The Garvey bonds covered 80%. The 20% was covered by something called whole called whole revenue credit for total revenue credit is where we the department becomes the beneficiary from the Turnpike commission and some of the funding and we were able to use the total revenue credit use the total revenue credit is a 20% equal match. That was one of the bundling of funds and how we wrapped that all together to get that money and move it forward very quickly. We use the money for the the money for the construction of the projects and below you can see how we divided up the money for preliminaries and right-of-way in the construction administration gusts that we had. We had a lot of support. We used a little bit of the money bit of the money to get the project development moving and will forward that way. So it was a great program. We are still paying for the bridges. We have a few years left. It was well worth all the effort and left. It was well worth all the effort and the funding to see the 223 bridges get completed. What I'm going to do now. We have a lot to talk about and as we get toward the end we will tagteam and answer some and answer some questions. I'm turning it over to Tim Keller. He will describe a little bit about how he selected the bridges and some of the thought we put into really getting the project the project and the program rolling. Thank you respect thank you, Andrea Andrea. I appreciate it. I need a little history lesson. Each one of these programs is based on where the status at the time they make these decisions. I need to backup a few years and give you a little background on how we got to where we are for Ohio is background on how we got to where we are for Ohio is a home rule state. It means the cities are responsible for their bridges on the streets and county on county routes and routes and the state is responsible for the interstates. Why would O.D.O.T. invest $120 million on county and city bridges? It's a good question, right? And this is where it's 100%. The first said, there's no money in it and why in it and why would we do something like that? Back in the mid-80s to late 90s O.D.O.T. did these bridges, very similar to what Kentucky did. Local bridges, a local stream crossings. Back to the Back to the middle 80s and O.D.O.T. had their own program and we did 3000 bridges. Our print system under the local system was very good and the conditions were very good. And when we did that was very good and the conditions were very good. And when we did that we created some business practices. We created a small bridge contractor. We created small bridge consultants to design the bridges. They were created in the 90s. When we got to 2000, to 2000, O.D.O.T. shifted into some of the urban urban core doors were some of the smaller contractors could compete. These are big projects and urban core doors. In that timeframe the counties did not have the money to invest. Fast forward to today or a few money to invest. Fast forward to today or a few years ago and O.D.O.T. generally, you look at the state and all of our bridges. Roads and bridges does it every year in Ohio is just above average. But if you look at it and you dive deeper and where the it and you dive deeper and where the problems were and the bridges around the local systems systems and counties and our governor said, we will not have a bridge fail on my fail on my watch and he was willing to put $120 million behind that. So then he came to us. What bridge will we do in the decision was made we will do the worst 200 bridges in the state. So okay, what does that mean? First we have a selection process. What bridges are eligible. It would be structured efficient and meets federal definitions and Ohio has a different definition for bridge. We have a 10-foot definition. So Rich had to be open to traffic.
Why is that? Why is that?
If you close a bridge you better have a game plan for how to for how to open it respect for those bridges there's already a game plan so let's hit the bridges about to be close. Local maintenance the responsibility of Cindy and county. It's 100%. We did not want to pull a program in 8020 and put it into this 100%. The big thing about noncomplex environmental we didn't want noncomplex environmental we didn't want historic bridges and we didn't want to go through very environmentally sensitive areas and we kept them simple. And so when we looked at this we had a project rich environment. We had over 800 bridges that that were eligible. So then we had to put a ranking system in place for the key here was if if you notice the map that Andrea Pirlo first, there were clusters. The selection of bridges, we did not want it to become political. Our world is generally political. At least At least this is an a while and I'm sure other states have something similar. We decided 100 based on our ranking system. We created the rule since we were paying for 100% and we rank them. 800 plus and almost 900 bridges and we rank them wanted 900 and pulled out the environmentally difficult projects and we rank them. If your bridge was in the the top 200 you were going to get a bridge. And what happened there is some counties, there's 88 counties in Ohio and some counties got a lot in some counties in some counties got none and so our political leadership said, this is a great job. If you don't have a worst bridge, worst bridge, sorry but it's good job. I heard a lot from various various County engineers. They are elected officials in Ohio and I heard a lot. And you like him better than me. And you are biased in this advice this advice and that. And we created the ranking system and we did not modify it. We did not change it and we do not allow County engineers saying, I will trade you this one for the trade you this one for the last one. There was none of that. Since we were 100% funding we make the rules. the rules. These were simple projects. Very limited roadway work. They were very simple and not technically complicated. So we created packages for these projects and Jeff will go into how we bundled. We had a boring log. We did civic control and right-of-way limits. We had to give them enough information so they could put in a good fit together. And so we scoped these and we allowed some variety here. We didn't say, what you had had to do. We would occasionally say, what you could not do. The county did not want trust, but generally these are 30 and 60-foot bridges. Go to the next slide. Now we did allow the local their input that we did not allow them to go play projects. Basically if they had a preference on preference on something, the bridge with or a few other things, if they did it with their own money, then we would put it in the scope. There were a few local things that they generally did. Generally these were one-size-fits-all. The target was quantity. We wanted to do wanted to do as many bridges that we could get done with the money we have and with that I will turn it over to Jeff.
Thank will turn it over to Jeff.
Thank you, Tim. As Andrea said, initially we were told we could spend $120 million on this program and when we started ranking and and selecting the top 200, we basically had a 3-year program that we would get this 200 constructed. And I will call that phase one. Fiscal year 14 through 16. Internet. We were able to construct and replace 209 bridges. At the end of that program we realize cost savings from bundling. Some projects came in underneath the engineers estimate and we found we had just over $20 million $20 million left over that we could still spend on bridges that didn't ranked within the top 200. We opened up a phase two and as you can see phase three. Phase two phase three. Phase two we were able to award an additional 10 bridges and this came in and more than $7.8 million. And then we looked at at phase three and we were able to award another award another nine bridges just under $10 million. We were able to maximize the number of bridges we could construct and construct and replace for that $120 million that we had. That program was such a successful program that we continue program that we continue the program. It's one of our annual capital programs now and rather than selecting the bridges like we bridges like we did for phases 1 through 3 we go to an application process where we open up for a six week. , both counties and municipalities can apply for funding through through the grant. So the first time in the first year we opened up we opened up the solicitation. And the solicitation process it was four projects for 22 and 23 and you could award an additional additional 17 bridges just under $10 million and in 24 we were able to award another 10 with the value of $5.4 million. Our next solicitation. We open it back up and we go through an annual solicitation. In the next one will be for bridges bridges fiscal year 25 opening up on March 1st we have our $5 million capital program for the bridge partnership program that's in addition to a couple other programs we have such as our municipal bridge programs and are $35 million local bridge County bridges. We realize a lot of efficiency efficiency and simplicity and we keep those objectives in in our program. Phase two and phase three of the original program was only open the original program was only open to counties. Since it's now one of our annual of our annual capital programs reloaded that backup. And one of the changes from the original program where we pay for a turnkey project and construction and design. With the current capital program we only pay for the the construction phase. We leave it up to the locals associated with the design the design cost and next slide. We realize we talk about right-of-way and utility concepts. We had to work on and addressed early. It had the efficient communication with the utility companies to get those those projects expedited. The projects were simple construction. We did not select bridges that had bridges that had a lot of environmental issues or historical aspects. We kept the projects fairly simple. These were locally These were locally owned bridges and while we handle this program, the first three pages got let they were responsible for keeping the inventory of bridges after we turned it back over back over to them. On some of the projects that were sold later we did have weather impacts. Many of the locals received these bridges at no cost. As we got into the later phases where it change from the current capital program they have funding in have funding in the project and we do have a dog in the fight. A consistent approach in project development when we were working on the initial $120 initial $120 million program. We have folks in the central office that were reviewing all the designs for designs for these bridges and bundles. We had a tight spot getting the projects projects to construction and we did have available funding to get the bridges constructed and make it a fairly a fairly efficient process. And then we had the 200 bridge we completed and O.D.O.T. District three in the fall of 2017. And I believe that is a picture to picture to the right. So the cost savings, projects were in close proximity and that enabled us to save money with localization contractors and they gave us a a break on mobilization costs and say, they were entitled proximity to proximity to one another and the packages were in various sizes. The Kentucky we are able to provide packages that were attractive to both larger and smaller contractors. We did not not want to bundle these bridges in larger packages that the larger contractors can bid on work we had a lot of input from some of the smaller contractors and the contractors Association and we listen to them and we had some smaller bundles that allowed some of the smaller contractors to get into the bidding and be able to be successful and receive funding and receive awards for some of the other other smaller bundles. And have a better range of dates. And I turned back over to you.
Thank you, Jeff. Andrea, Tim and Jeff. Thank you for a Thank you for a great presentation. Same for Royce and Tony from Kentucky. We could go for days talking about them. It seems like there is so much to learn with what you went through. If we could briefly open up briefly open up the phone lines again for questions, that would be great.
Certainly. Once again if you want to ask a question it is to ask a question it is star one at this time. Once again it is star one.
And if you don't want to unmute just type want to unmute just type the question in the chat pod. While we are waiting I do have one for both and maybe we will start out with Ohio. You know each one of these projects is unique. They all have different goals and objectives. Going back to our theme of making the business making the business case. What was the biggest issue for Ohio Ohio? It helps you make the business case and maybe what was biggest obstacle or struggle that you did and how you did and how you address it. I don't know Andrea if you you want to take that?
To him you want to talk about that one with the I got a bridge and my neighbor didn't or I got a bridge and my got a bridge and my neighbor didn't?
That was the politics part of this. We ranked them. And that was a big challenge. They are elected and engineers and an understanding of bridges. It's one of the big challenges. We did not spread it around. They wanted us to give everyone a couple of bridges. Our focus was on the worth 200 bridges. That was a difficult issue to deal with. Quickly we held firm and said, no we are not going to we are not going to do that. So that was one of the big challenges for us and how we put this together.
I'm shocked to hear there's politics involved in Ohio.
Challenging, isn't it?
Yes. And it's a And it's a good point. I look back at the bridge bundling and there's a whole chapter dedicated to building a coalition just to deal with just to deal with these issues. It's important to have clear goals and objectives and build that build that outreach for coalition for making the case for your initiative. Thank you for that. Tony and Royce? Was it similar for you, your struggle? What was the issue that help you make the case the most.
Speaking that help you make the case the most.
Speaking of politics it was the previous administration wanting to make a big impact. Politics is out of our way and we were forced to be creative. They wanted us to do things big and think differently. We were in a position where politics wasn't in the way and we weren't getting a lot of pushback. We were pushback. We were from the lower levels of the cabinet but leadership is on our size and we were lucky on that side. Leadership has changed with the last election but I believe the fruits of our labor are shown to be valuable and I don't think that I don't think that the bundling and the way we've done this program will necessarily program will necessarily go away. Richaun we can do 350 bridges in 15 months or do 100 and 15 months. The process The process is the same and it's successful.
That's great to hear, a man. I always invited my staff to not have politics involved. If it survives the administration is a true sign of success the program stayed the same even though they changed the name. Any changed the name. Any questions from anyone in the audience? Chat pod or online? But for those of you on of you on the line that is star one. Hearing no questions if you have questions dropped them in the chat pod we are going to go on because we want to to briefly cover resources available. Doing project bundling. You have bridges in the presentations but David talked about safety and we safety and we have great examples of pavements and local cities anti-to bundle and save money and gusts on paper projects. It works for any type of asset. Doing it right and understanding the issues the issues and goals is very important. Let's go to the last part of the of the presentation for a few more minutes here. Resources. I will turn this over to over to you Romeo.
Thank you, Dan and to the presenter from Kentucky, Ohio and David. The next few slides will list the project bundling resources. Starting with the slide here there are two websites that have have significant information on project bundling as follows. We have our FHWA EDC website and from that website you can get to the next link for the office of innovative program delivery. And you link for the office of innovative program delivery. And you can cool and go to the website and from there you can get into project bundling with cool.
Here is what we have considered a support for you for you for project bundling. We have workshops that are available. There are one and a half day workshops that can be delivered in person or virtual. At the moment they are only being offered only being offered as virtual. Likewise other changes. And we've already had a couple of those. We also are offering targeted technical assistant 40 hour box of assistance. And we are available to make presentations, local, regional or national. We have a Webinar series, such as when we are having here today. And we are working on developing today. And we are working on developing case studies and how to use will available soon. Other tools and resources tools and resources are under development. We have a supplement to the push bundling guidebook. We have how to use in the college lecture course. Those kinds of resources. What else would you like like to see the help you with implementing the project bundling and a greater way. This is a question for you. Police let us know if there is anything Police let us know if there is anything else missing and we have resources to develop for further help. And, our next slide, we have some funding opportunities that are that are connected with our everyday accounts. We have our state innovation Council initiative. We provide up to $100,000 per stick per year. Standardize innovation. We also have our accelerated innovation deployment demonstration program. It provides up to $1 million a year to to deploy innovation and is routinely used. You want to look for funding and orders of funding availability for that program. Keep an eye on that one. The next slide please. And we have also innovation deployment news that you can subscribe to. We have our weekly newsletter, EDC news and our bimonthly magazine and you can subscribe to these through these through the links here or go to the website and you can subscribe from there as well. At this point I will hand it back to hand it back to Dan. Thank you.
Thank you. Those are great resources. For clarification the grants have to go through go through the state D.O.T. agency or local governments directly? Pectorals are through the state D.O.T. directly.
Okay. So the agencies can go through go through the state D.O.T. and partner with them. Thank you, Romeo. I'm just going to wrap up here and talk about the upcoming Webinar series. I want to remind everyone if you have not already and you would like a training certificate for today's presentation put your name in the e-mail address and the chat pod. and the chat pod. I did failed to mention at the beginning that there is a downloadable pod that includes four documents you may want to download before you lock off. One is the Webinar series and also there is today's presentation materials and a PDF PDF of that and the fact sheet and resources that are available to agencies with the flyer with contact information. So I will wrap this up. Just talking about the Webinar series we have created Webinar series we have created for this project initiative and help not only stay but stay but local governments and wherever they are to make it more of a routine standard process and how surviving and administrations in Ohio is looking so well that looking so well that it's becoming more routine. When we don't talk about it and we just do it and everyone is doing it. There's a lot of great opportunities for efficiencies here when you have the right situation and you are doing it right. This is our third Webinar in the series. You can go to the website and watch it. We had a great Webinar talk about a lot of bundling activities. We went through 25 he practices that we observed through our case studies case studies and research and each agency practicing, what are they doing and what does it take to get there. Today's what's the making of the there. Today's what's the making of the business case and that will be posted and people can finally share that. Upcoming next month is specifically for local public agencies there are two aspects. Locals and locals working together and how to get some case studies and we will walk through on that. And we need challenges associated with that. In 2021 we are getting into how to do it and how do you determine your bundles. In February we have a session plan focusing on these issues and building a coalition and risk assessments and those kinds of things that would be very beneficial as you make your case for would be very beneficial as you make your case for project bundling and whatever your goals are. With that, if there are any other questions, now is is a great time. Feel free to e-mail Rimer or David or myself and we will get back we will get back to you as quick as we can and if we don't know the answer we will find out who does. With that I would like to know the answer we will find out who does. With that I would like to thank Royce and Tony for the great presentation on bridges in Kentucky and Angela and Jeff were there Ohio D.O.T. presentation and Of course, Romeo and David for being the David for being the leaders on this project bundling commission. They've done an awful lot of work. A lot of great resources are being produced that should help all agencies, whether you you are a state or local agency. Do you have any last minute words?
I'm good, Dan. And thanks for moderating. Please contact us if you need help.
All right. Thank you, everyone very much. I'm going to switch to the the pole pod and if you want to complete the pole it will be open for a few minutes if you want to add, particularly question a, if you have any questions or concerns that questions or concerns that we can focus on please enter that. We would appreciate that. Thank you, everyone everyone for attending.
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