Major Projects

Joint DOT/FHWA Major Project Webinar (November 2015) - Transcript

November 10, 2015

Sponsored by the FHWA Major Project Discipline

Presented by

Jim Sinnette
Center for Innovative Finance Support
FHWA

LaToya Johnson
Center for Innovative Finance Support
FHWA

Allan Kosup
Corridor Director for Interstate 5, State Route 76, and State Route 78
Caltrans

Carlos F. Figueroa, P.E.
Center for Innovative Finance Support
FHWA

Sue Datta
Senior Project Manager
Michigan DOT

Paul Lampley, P.E.
595 Operations Construction Manager
Florida DOT

Kelley Hall, P.E.
595 Operations Project Manager
Florida DOT

Mark Sullivan
BATIC Project Development Lead
Center for Innovative Finance Support
FHWA

Operator: Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for standing by, welcome to the joint DOT FHWA major project webinar. At this time, all participants are in a listen-only mode. Later, we will conduct a question-and-answer session. Instructions will be given at that time. If you should require assistance during the call please press star then zero. I would now like to turn the conference over to your host Jordan Wainer, please go ahead.

Jordan Wainer: Thank you, Paula. On behalf of the Federal Highway Administration's Center for Innovative Finance Support I would like welcome to today's joint DOT FHWA major project webinar. My name is Jordan Wainer. I'm with the U.S. DOT's Volpe Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts and today I will be facilitating our question-and-answer period and providing technical assistance. I will introduce Jim Sinnette, the project delivery team leader momentarily. But before he begins I would like to point out a few key features of our webinar room. On the top left side of your screen you will find the audio call in information. If you are disconnected from our webinar at any time, please use that call in information to reconnect to our audio. Below the audio information is a list of attendees. Below the list of attendees is a box titled material for download where you may access a copy of today's presentation. Simply select the file, click download file and follow the prompts on your screen. In the lower left corner is a chat box where you can submit questions to our presenters throughout the webinar. We will pause for questions at the end of each presentation if time allows and we may take questions over the phone later on. Further instruction will be given at that time. If you experience any technical difficulties, please use the chat box to send a private message to Michael Kay. Our webinar is scheduled to run until 3:30 P.M. Eastern today and we are recording today's webinar so that anyone unable to join us may review the material at a later time. Finally, before we get started there are two quick poll questions I would like to introduce to help better understand where our audience is. The first question is how many people are participating with you today. The second question is what is your affiliation? So I'll give you all a couple of seconds to respond to those polls. And thank you for your responses. I'll close out the polls now and turn over the webinar to Jim Sinnette. Jim...

Jim Sinnette: All right, thank you. To echo the welcome to the FHWA major project community. This is our fourth joint state DOT FHWA major project webinar. And as usual we have some interesting presentations from Caltrans, Michigan DOT and Florida DOT. I noticed on the polling questions that we do have a good number of state DOT participants on this webinar. And it's something that's always interesting from a Federal Highway perspective to see what the state DOT perspective is on these major projects. And I know I learn a lot from these presentations. Once we finish these presentations we'll have a very brief update on some major project announcements and we'll talk about the Build America Transportation Investment Center that has been up and running since probably about September or so. So it's a pretty new initiative from the office of the secretary. So with that I'll turn it over to LaToya and she can get started.

LaToya Johnson: Thanks, Jim and hello everyone. Again, I just want to echo Jim's welcome. I'm so pleased that you all could join us and I'm extra excited that we have the three presentations that we have today I think are very interesting. And I think the audience will get a lot of out of them, a lot of lessons learned, a lot of good lessons learned that we often take back to use on Federal Highway major projects throughout the country. So without any delay because I know we have a jam-packed agenda, as usual, I want to thank the speakers and we'll roll right into our first presentation. So our first presentation will come from Caltrans, the California Department of Transportation and we have Mr. Allan Kosup with us who will talk about the planning and environmental lessons learned on the I-5 north coast project. I think you'll find that this is a very interesting project and they had some very unique issues that they've had to work through over the past few years to progress this project forward. Allan is the corridor director for the I-5 project. And he served as the focal point for the corridor project and is responsible and accountable for the cost, scope, schedule, delivery and completion of transportation improvement on the I-5 corridor as well as the state route 76 and state route 78. He's been with Caltrans since 1983. And he served in various positions. He served as the deputy district director where he was responsible for the district's capital program which included 800 employees and delivering anywhere from $300 to $600 million of capital improvements annually. So with that I want to introduce Allan. Allan, thanks.

Allan Kosup: Good morning and welcome. Let me just kind of step through a little bit of what the corridor is. We call it the I-5 north coast, not the north coat but coast corridor in San Diego County and it's a 27-mile long corridor. One of the things that's unique about San Diego County, obviously, the coastal boundaries. This project is entirely within the coastal zone. And we have very limited north/south facilities, in fact, we really only have two in our county. One the I-5 corridor combination freeway and rail and then the I-15 corridor. And because of that our facilities are much more than just commuter facilities. In fact, sometimes we have higher volumes on Saturdays and Sundays as people go to the recreational areas as people are moving to and from Mexico. We've got a lot of goods movement. And so they're very high demand corridors. On the freeway we're running probably close to 250,000 folks a day. In the corridor at any one point in time we run about 700,000 people per day are touching the corridor so a lot of demand. In California, our coastal zone has a higher regulatory bar so to speak and that was a major constraint as we looked at the project. Also, a number of endangered species. So it was a very complex project to begin with. We go over through six coastal cities and through six coastal lagoons. And at the end of the day what we have is a $6 billion 30 year program of projects that really has four major components, express lanes which are essentially managed lanes that we're going to use first and foremost for carpools bus rapid transit and then any additional capacity will be priced. It's very similar to a model we have on the I-15. Also our existing rail line about half of it is single track. And so we're going to be finishing. We want to add more frequency, reduce headways in the rail line and so we need to finish double tracking the corridor. And then two other components that are probably unique to the program is improved coastal access. I mentioned that coastal commission bar. One of the things there from their business processes is improving capacity on a transportation facility isn't really one of their goals but improving coastal access is. And so that was something that was something that we needed to look at on our project. And then coastal habitat improvements it mentioned the endangered species and the lagoons. We'll talk a little bit more about those in the future. Just kind of high level of what's the corridor look like? It hasn't really been touched since the early sixties when we built it. True to Southern California standards, low density, widely spread job centers, does not really make it a transit friendly corridor. But you can see how much population has boomed over the last 30 or 40 years. And we see another million people coming to this 27-mile long corridor in the next 30 plus years. And as I said, we're already experiencing congestion pretty much throughout the day and on weekends. Slide eight is just sort of an example of the challenge we're up against but it also highlights maybe an opportunity that we didn't see when we started the entitlement process and the environmental process. At the lower end of the slide is I-5 crossing one of the coastal lagoons. And in the middle of a lagoon you can kind of see an old wooden trestle. And then at the oceanside you side a city street called Coast Highway. But you can see how when the facilities were built, these transportation facilities were built we weren't too sensitive to the health of these lagoons. And so we tended to fill into the lagoons and shorten the bridges in order to reduce the cost. And so I think sort of a lesson is-- and then one additional constraint or challenge you can see that we really blocked east/west bike and ped traffic as well as north/south. The bike and peds had very few places to go. If you want to cross the lagoon you pretty much go a mile to the west and then use Coast Highway and then come back. If you go to the east then it's about another mile to the east to the first major regional arterial. And so these transportation facilities really did act as a barrier for the communities to move around. And then you can also see how development was starting to encroach into these lagoon areas and kind of soak up the last remaining open space in the coastal zone. So I think one of the lessons learned is our need and purpose for the highway job started out as a freeway job. It was a Caltrans lead agency project with FHWA. It started in 2004. The need and purpose was kind of an old fashioned congestion relief at capacity. But over time it became clear that the need and purpose needed to include enhancing and not just mitigating but enhancing some of the coastal resources. And that really became the bar to get the project approved with the California Coastal Commission as well as the regulatory agencies. And this slide kind of shows that sort of joint effort among all of the different agencies. It was identified back in the bush administration under presidential order as a project of high nationwide significance and a challenging corridor that was going to require the agencies to work differently together in sort of a different conflict resolution approach, if you would. And then the whole I-5 corridor is a corridor on the west coast. Locally, just kind of point out sort of other lessons learned or something that really helps us is that our NPO and our state DOT in San Diego County is very close. Our teams are joint agency teams. We try not to pursue projects individually. We try to merge them at the end but instead we actually merged the teams. And so we'll have corridor directors who kind of represent both agencies and staffs will work sort of interchangeably under this corridor director. When we stared out in 2004 the coastal communities were very concerned about widening the freeway and adding traffic so much so that a state legislation was introduced SB-468 which originally tried to kill the highway expansion and prioritize the transit first. But at the end of the day it was actually a very helpful bill that really just requested a balanced approach and they were very concerned that we were going to do the freeway improvements of the $6 billion program first, never get to the rail, never get to the lagoon. And so one of the asks was it needs to be balanced. It needed to have those bike and ped facilities that we talked about. And in the lagoons they didn't want to see an incremental approach. They didn't want to see the rail people come in the first five years and then the highway people come in the second five years. They wanted this get in and get out idea. And that lead us to, and we'll talk a little bit later, us pursuing a CMGC pilot because we just felt that was a good way to construct these improvements in the lagoon and further blur the lines between being a highway and a rail project. One of the things we talk about in terms of lessons learned is although we had individual environmental documents both for the rail and for the highway we rolled them up under an umbrella document for the California Coastal Commission which we call the public works plan and recognize that most projects don't need this. But we actually found it as an asset because it allowed us to address the mitigations and the impacts of the highway and the rail more holistically. So that was a huge advantage and a huge improvement in terms of dealing with the regulatory agencies. It also allowed us to try to find synergy opportunities in working the projects together since we were going to try rebuilding them at the same time. Perhaps there was ways to reduce costs and reduce throwaway and just be more innovative. This is an example of how we're dealing with some of the active transportation. At the bottom of this slide, you see a large monolithic-- it was originally a monolithic wall that the engineers ended up splitting the wall and putting a new north/south bike facility in it. And interestingly enough as we talk about the need and purpose evolving and including coastal access this carpool lane/express lane now has a brand new 27-mile long north/south bike ped facility that's attached to it. So that was part of the positive enhancements of the project to actually get the communities and the region to yes. One of the regulatory goals of the California Coastal Commission is the project can only be approved if there's a net enhancement to coastal resources, not mitigation. So it's a net enhancement so you can see the bar is a little bit higher. Interestingly enough, this project is also partially funded with the region sales tax. So we have a half-cent sales tax in San Diego County that goes to transportation and this one of the larger projects in that program. And that's important because one of the things that it allowed us to do is the region looked at building a comprehensive restoration package for both the rail and the highway across the entire thirty years and allowed us to try to front load that mitigation package to the first five or ten years and we used the region's money to do that. And that really was attractive to the resource agencies. It wasn't this mitigation as it occurs. They get this all in the first 5 years of this 30-year program. And in exchange what we got from the regulatory agencies was flexibility and how we're going to mitigate and enhance these impacts because we didn't have enough habitat to create. We could create new habitat at one to one. But in terms of going above and beyond the one to one we were challenged. It just wasn't enough space. And so the resource agencies allowed this multifaceted holistic program of mitigation and it totals close $200 million of restoration. And so there was some property that we were able to buy that was going to be developed and so we were able to reserve that in perpetuity. There was other property that had been filled in over time and reduced the wetlands and so we were able to convert that back to wetlands. We were also able to fund two large restoration lagoon restoration projects that are in the corridor. And we're actually adding those large lagoon restoration projects to our freeway and rail projects which is very interesting, again, broadening the definition of a transportation project. We talked about those narrow lagoons. One of the things that the regulatory agencies asked for, this is a once in a lifetime opportunity. We were going to have to remove and replace those bridges anyway. And they asked that we study what it would take to lengthen the bridges to restore title flushing. It turned out that it was about double the size of those bridges. And the region stepped up and funded those longer bridges and that became part of our enhancement program, not our mitigation but our enhancement program. Also we're funding some long term endowments. The lagoons fill up with sediment and they periodically annually or every other year need to be dredged. The foundations who manage these lagoons did not have any funds to dredge them. And so part of our mitigation package is actually funding those long term dredging programs. And here's just an example. You can see what the existing bridge looks like at one of the lagoons and then you can see in the bottom how we're lengthening that bridge. And then lengthening this allowed us to put in a new bike and ped facility. So the idea of synergy, a transportation, carpooling, job turned into a lagoon health job, turned into a coastal access job. This slide-- just the net benefit slide talks about, you know, we ended up being able to convince the regulatory agencies in the communities that the build project resulted in a net benefit, again, not mitigation but above and beyond the existing baseline condition. And that was really helpful in moving people to yes. So where are we today? The region surprisingly didn't have $6 billion to frontload the entire program in year 5, in the first 5 years. What they do have is about $600 or $700 million of different colors of funds, federal funds, state funds and then local funds that we talked about. And so Caltrans is the lead agency in building this suite pack of improvements, this $600 million portfolio. You can see here basically removing and replacing two rail bridges living up to that get in and get out once, building the carpool lane, thirteen miles of carpool lane, one lane in each direction. We don't have enough to build two lanes so we're not going to build the express lanes in phase one. Those are probably in year ten fifteen, something like that. But we will be in the lagoons removing and replacing those freeway and rail bridges. And it also includes the restoration of San Elijo Lagoon. So we're putting that all under one construction contract with CMGC and a joint venture. Just kind of segueing to why we chose CMGC in terms of another sort of lessons learned for us. One of our big concerns was communicating to the contractor accurately what our expectations were in building those projects in the lagoons be it normal traditional specs and plans. We felt there was a lot of opportunity for arguing and construction claims and arguing with the regulatory agencies in construction. Water quality is paramount, environmental health paramount. And we did not want to risk that conversation with a contractor. And so the CMGC allowed us to work collaboratively with them so that they understand what the expectations are. The flip side of that is the contractor has brought a lot of innovations that maybe we wouldn't have felt comfortable in putting out in a design-bid-build-package because we weren't exactly sure how they would be administered. They've been able to give it assurances to the regulatory agencies that these alternatives are better for the environment. And so we've actually found some opportunities, constructability opportunities to reduce the cost reduce the potential impact. As an example we thought we were going to have to work in the lagoons in the wet and not be able to build a work berm in the lagoons. And the resource agencies once they talked to the contractor and gotten comfortable with the idea of building a work berm it's both cheaper and probably safer for the environment. So the idea of improving our constructability, making sure that we're all in the same page and what's in the bid. And then the project we weren't really sure, some of the costs were very soft because we just didn't have a lot of experience as engineers doing the lagoon restoration job and building these bridges in the lagoon. So working with the contractor to price it has allowed us to design the budget. We only have a set budget. And so we're able to move scope and then move scope in and out of this phase one. It's ultimately going to get built in the finished product, the 30-year product but what can we afford in phase one? We're able to work collaboratively with the contractor and build the highest priority elements. So far CMGC we've been under pre construction contract with the joint venture. It's a joint venture of Flatiron, Skanska, and Stacy Witbeck. We've had them under contract for about ten months of pre-construction and it's been very helpful. So just to kind of wrap up. In terms of the entitlement best practices of the holistic systems approach to mitigation was huge for us. The holistic systems approach to transportation was huge to us. And I think Caltrans has always been criticized for sort of building projects two or three miles at a time. In this case we planned a 27-mile long corridor both rail and highway together. And so I think we had a good handle on what needed to be built first and when we made those changes, where the congestion was going to go. And so I think it's a more cost effective project looking at it holistically. And I think it met the expectations given in California focused on VMT, greenhouse gas, having a rail component was very important. You know, the idea of sort of bringing new mobile choices to the corridor was very important. And so the holistic systems approach from both environmental and transportation was important. And I can't emphasize enough that the idea that the need and purpose actually includes a need and purpose element related to improving the environmental in the corridor. So I think that, at least, from a Caltrans perspective that was very unique. Shared agency objective, you know, once we moved it from just being a transportation project to trying to understand what the regulatory agencies wanted to accomplish in the corridor that was very-- that brought everyone under one tent so to speak. And it became-- changed it from a more developer regulatory agency paradigm to more of a team approach. I think that was very helpful. And then this idea of integration brought opportunity. And the fact that the region was part of the funding, you know, major funding player, again, the projects became more of a regional enhancement project not a carpooling project. And we were only able to do that with the region's support. Best practices so far, it's only ten months. We were very concerned probably early on that the design teams were not going to be listening to the ideas that the contractor brought forward. That has not been a problem. It's been a very good relationship, lots of free flow flowing of ideas. So I think the project design is much better for this collaboration with the contractor. Cost negotiations that's kind of a new skill for the DOT. I mean we're used to negotiating change orders but in this case it's a $600 million contract. So it's a work in progress with probably both the contractor and us. It's probably taking a little bit longer than we thought needing a little more patience on our part but I think we'll get there. And in terms of an additional business practice we talk about integration and the systems approach is what we need to do which is true. Sort of the downside of integration is that it's mushing a lot of business practices of different companies together like an MPO and a state DOT. We do things differently. And so when we want to integrate and we want to build it under one flag that's the right thing to do but it takes a lot of work and collaboration so that both companies, both businesses are fairly represented in the risks and the cost estimating and just general business practice. Where do we go from here? We're going to do our GMP, our guaranteed maximize price, process with the CMGC contractor. It starts in January. We have one last coastal commission hearing in March and we hope to begin construction in late spring. It's about a five year construction period for that $600-$700 million project. One of the biggest challenges is removing and replacing those bridges across the lagoon. As I say, we have about 250,000 people a day over each lagoon. So traffic management in the corridor will be challenging. That's it. Questions?

LaToya Johnson: All right, thank you so much Allan. Great presentation. Very, very interesting project. And with that, we will open it up for questions and we'll give everyone a few minutes to type questions in the chat pod. And since we have a little bit of time, Paula, can we go to the phone lines and see if anyone is available.

Operator: Certainly, thank you. Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to ask a question please press star then one on your touchtone phone. A voice prompt on your phone line will indicate when your line has been opened. You may remove yourself from the queue at any time by pressing star two. If you are using a speakerphone please pick up the handset before pressing the corresponding digits. Once again, star one at this time for any phone questions.

LaToya Johnson: All right, and while people are calling in and typing I see we have one question from Mark Sullivan. Mark says, "Does the rail corridor planning incorporate high speed rail? Or would that be a separate project with its own set of environmental enhancements?"

Allan Kosup: So coastal character to the six cities is sort of paramount. It really became a major issue in the whole conversation. High speed rail was looked at in this corridor but was not consistent with the coastal communities. They did not want see that frequency and that type of rail service in this corridor. So high speed rail in San Diego County will be brought inland. It won't be brought along the coastal zone.

LaToya Johnson: All right, thanks, Allan. And next we have a question from Joe who says, "For CMGC is billing done on a unit price basis? Or is the contract lump sum?"

Allan Kosup: So probably a mixture of both. I think we started off going towards the idea of it being a traditional GMP guaranteed maximum price lump sum. I think what we've moved to is more lump sums on items. It's allowed us maybe to deal with risk better. Some of the items will be done sort of the old fashioned way meaning, you know, just sort of time and materials or based on a unit of measurement, yards of dirt and so forth. So it's going to be a mix. It's definitely not going to be a GMP although I would tell you that there's a transit project just to the south of us being administered by the region SANDAG and they are doing a traditional GMP for trolley extension of similar size. So I think both can work.

LaToya Johnson: Okay. Thank you. And I see a few people typing. So as they're typing, Paula, can we check the phone lines see if anyone has called in?

Operator: And there are no questions at this time. As a reminder, star one for phone questions.

LaToya Johnson: So we have a question from North Carolina DOT and it says, "What strategies did you conduct to balance between rail, highway and community?"

Allan Kosup: So one of the things that we did was we hired a consultant who was good with railing planning and systems planning. And as I said, 50 percent of the rail is single track. And so they came up with a prioritized program of improvements that allowed us to spot on the elements that were causing-- the problem is we can't include-- we can't improve the number of trains or reduce frequency without some of these bottlenecks on the rail lines being fixed. And so this consultant allowed us to prioritize and highlight those points. So that was one way we did it. The second way we did it is the idea if you're in a lagoon we're going to move to the front or at least pair you up with the highway project. And that was the same was true with the bike and peds. The bike and ped elements are usually embedded in either rail or freeway improvement and so they really can't go by themselves. And so they get aligned with the major mode project.

LaToya Johnson: Okay. And I see at least one more person typing. So we'll give them a few seconds. And check the phone line one more time.

Operator: And there are not questions at this time.

LaToya Johnson: All right, and I see we have something from Milwaukee and Wisconsin wants to know, "What was the decision process Caltrans used to expand the need and purpose to include bike, pedestrian and other coastal concerns?"

Allan Kosup: Adapt or die. I mean in California, I guess, the communities and the regions made it real clear that they didn't want a freeway centric project. They didn't want a project that just reduced congestion. And so I think it was an evolving process for us and FHWA working together to expand the need and purpose. And as I said, this is probably unique to California and projects specifically in the coastal zone but the law does not allow for capacity increasing transportation projects in the coastal zone that do not also have an enhancement to the coastal zone, our coastal resources. So that could include a lot of different aspects to the coastal resources just not the habitat. It could improve visual, air quality. We talked about coastal access. Coastal commission is very interested in getting people out of their cars. And so from that standpoint there were lots of different aspects of improving coastal resources. On the other hand, most people don't go to the beach in a train because they're taking their family and they're bringing their picnic boxes and their surfboards. And so I think over time the coastal commission evolved to also understanding that the freeway job was helping them meet their objectives. And I think that's where I talk about trying to share objectives of the different agencies. Traditionally, Caltrans probably would not have done that. We would have just approached it and tried to convince the rig that we needed the project. At the end of the day they needed the project as much as we did.

LaToya Johnson: All right. And then we have another question from North Carolina DOT and they say, "Why did you select CMGC rather than design-build? And how does this help on the complexity of your project?"

Allan Kosup: And this is probably just me talking but in terms of the design-build one of the things that we have struggled with in California with design-build is, you know, the bid or the package is as good as our ability to write specs and plans at 30 or 40 percent and trying to get the contractors to do what we want them to do in a very sensitive corridor is kind of open to interpretation of what was in that original package. So that, in my mind, leads to a lot of opportunity for conflict. In urban areas where Caltrans is an extremely hands on owner we know exactly what we want and the communities know exactly what they want. It doesn't seem to really lend itself to that sort of procurement. Where CMGC we get the final call. The owner gets to make the decision on what's in the package, but what we get is we get choice. And so the contractor brings us alternatives, brings us esthetic treatments, tells us how much it's going to cost and then we get to pick. In design-build the picking isn't so easy without a potential claim. So I think in my mind that's why we went that way. And if folks are interested in a lot of information on the enhancements or what the project looks like keepsandiegomoving.com on the webpage. That was sort of another lessons learned for us. As a state DOT we are not good, we are just a bunch of engineers, we are not good at communications. Externally, packaging, branding, collateral development, webpages not really in our strike zone. And so having the region on board allowed us to bring in consultants. And so if you look at the webpage you'll see some examples of how they were able to package our project in a way that the public better understood. One of the things my boss gives me grief for is we started out calling the project eight plus four or ten plus four and the choice was do you want four additional lanes or do you want two additional lanes. No one understood that. I understood it but the public didn't. And so the communication consultant really helped us frame these questions better.

LaToya Johnson: All right. Thanks, Allan. And I think somewhere related to your last response Scott E. wants to know, "Do you have documents posted online or available to send that provide an overview of your project development process?"

Allan Kosup: The keepsandiegomoving.com has some. And then we can also send you the PowerPoint from today too. No problem.

LaToya Johnson: And I should mention that we will be posting the PowerPoint as well as the recording on our website so it should be available in a few days as well. And then lastly, from North Carolina DOT and this may be a good segue to our next presentation, but North Carolina DOT wants to know, "Did you apply any five dimensional project management to this project? And if so how?" And I think this is a prelude to our SHRP2 R10 product that talks about project management strategy for complex projects. So Allan, did you have a response for that?

Allan Kosup: I'll take the fifth on the five dimensional. I'm not actually familiar with that term. I would say that project management and sort of the PMBOK traditional topics are very important to us. I mean we spend a lot of time with the risk management o communication management and then, of course, the traditional cost and schedule. So I think it's really important to us. We have a project office so to speak. So believe in it highly.

LaToya Johnson: Thanks, Allan. And thanks, again, for a great presentation and great questions from the audience. I would just encourage you to continue the questions. So as we're going through the next couple of presentations feel free to go right ahead and provide comments or questions in the chat pod. So our next presentation is coming from the Michigan Department of Transportation with the tag team-- or with Federal Highway. And the presentation will be on the SHRP2 R10 product about project management strategies for complex projects and project management plans for a couple of their major projects in the state. So first, you'll be hearing from Carlos Figueroa. He is the Federal Highway SHRP2 project management program manager. He is currently leading the implementation of both the SHRP2 R09 product as well as the R10 product. R09 deals with risk management and is the risk management tool for transportation agencies to use to better understand their transportation projects. And currently he's working with over 20 DOTs to implement these two products. Carlos has been with Federal Highway for over ten years and he's had assignments in the Georgia division as well as with Central Federal Lands Highway Division. Secondly, you will hear from Sue Datta and Sue Datta is a senior project manager from the Michigan Department of Transportation. For the last 15 years Sue has worked on the I-75 project in Oakland County which is the Detroit metro area. And this project encompasses eighteen miles and six communities. And she's also had the opportunity to manage and participate in other regionally significant projects in the Detroit metro area including some very complex interchange redesigns, traffic improvements, pedestrian accommodation as well as some contact sensitive activities. So with that I will turn it over to Carlos and then you will be hearing from Sue. Carlos...

Carlos Figueroa: Thank you very much, LaToya. Good afternoon. Good morning to those of you on the west coast. I'll give you a brief overview about the SHRP2 program and then I'm also going to talk about the R10 product, project management strategies for complex projects. We'll discuss the DOTs that are implementing this product and some of the examples of the implementation on these DOTs. So let me give you an overview about the SHRP2 program. The SHRP2 program is a research program. It's the second strategic highway research program. And it was authorized by Congress in 2005. And the research efforts were from pretty much '06 to 2011. And then since 2012 to 2013 we've been in the implementation portion of this effort. We have been through a series of rounds offering different types of funding and technical assistance to implement products that include the different areas of the transportation industry from preconstruction all the way to construction and maintenance. And this is an effort that's been a joint effort by AASHTO, Federal Highway and TRB. TRB was the leader in the research portion of this effort and then Federal Highway and AASTHO are the champions in the implementation part in the field with different DOTs. And so the main objective is to reduce cost, time on the projects and at the same time increase safety so that we can reduce fatalities and accidents. So the R10 product managing complex projects. The main result of this research was a guidebook. This guidebook it's a formal program or formal product to manage projects to encourage DOT, transportation agencies to manage projects and deliver projects in a different approach. Bring in two dimensions that a lot of times we consider but we may not be aware of the same level of importance than the typical dimensions or areas that we manage, schedule, technical and cost. So the main difference in this 5DPM, five dimensional project management, is bringing those two additional dimensions context and financial dimensions at the same level of importance and awareness than the other typical three. The guidebook includes a series of tools, includes a formal training for DOT staff to be able to learn how to do this. Exercises, the 5DPM exercises. There's a series of five methods and also thirteen recommended execution tools that were observed in different projects in the research portion of this product. Those projects included overseas projects and also in the U.S. And so there's a formal training to make DOT staff to become proficient in conducting these exercises and also facilitate in the exercises with a DOT staff leading this in a workshop environment or a meeting environment. Also there's a series of case studies with the lessons learned and also complexity maps of different projects. Complexity maps is something I'm going to discuss more in detail in the next few slides. And then also forms to conduct the different exercises the five methods and the thirteen tools. Okay. Some of the benefits of this product includes as you can see in the slide the emphasis in the term early. So that's one of the things that we're encouraging the DOTs on the transportation agencies just to think about doing things earlier in the process as much as possible. And that includes communication between the different players, different participants of the project team and also outside of the project team including any other stakeholders. Also an identification of the complexity factors within each of those five dimensions, assessing the most complex factors and then translating that into the most complex dimension at a particular point in the project. Then also the early preparation of documents such as the financial plan, the schedule, the resources, and doing this in a proactive approach rather than reactive and waiting things to happen and then come up with solutions to solve those issues. And that's one of the important methods recommended in this product, the project action plans it's something to overcome roadblocks and speedbumps, any obstacles that may cost an impact in the schedule and cost of the project. And, again, having those context and financial dimensions as drivers of the project and being aware that we have to manage those two at the same level than the typical cost schedule and technical requirements. Okay. So here's the complexity map which I mentioned briefly a few minutes ago. So the complexity map it's a visual tool to help identify and understand the dimension or the most complex dimensions at a particular time in a project. So pretty much what we do, we put the project team together in a workshop environment and we make them go through a list of factors in each dimension. These factors are typical factors that affect the dimensions, the five dimensions. And so the project team would pick the factors with the most complexity at a particular time in the project. And then once they complete that they would rank the dimension from a scale to 0 to 100, 100 being the most complex, 50 being an average complexity and, of course, 0 would be no complexity. And so trying to identify and assess the most complex dimension at a particular time in the project so that the project team can allocate resources and attack those complexities, those issues at that time and then keep the project moving forward according to the schedule, the critical success factors and any other constraints. Okay. So in this slide, what we're showing is that the idea of this complexity map is that we're encouraged to do this at several times in the lifecycle, the project, and the different stages of the project, all the way in this case from preliminary design, conceptual design and then project authorization and then actually in the execution. And the idea is being able to identify those complexities, manage those issues and allocate resources throughout the different stages and reduce the overall complexity footprint, the overall complexity area which would give you an idea that you're being successful in meeting the goals of the projects and the success factors of the project. Okay. So I talked about the five dimensions, the two additional dimensions that we're incorporating with this product. There are also five methods and thirteen tools recommended. So the first method is defining critical success factors on your project. And it's something that is done on each of the five dimensions. It's something that we also recommend to do it in a way that you can measure that success, for example, finishing the project at a cost of X-millions or less. Or in the same way finishing the project by X-date, having cost increase no more than three percent, five percent, for example and things like that. Then the second method it's assembling the project team. So it's not only thinking about the right team, the right step, the right experience and expertise to meet the needs of the project and the scope of the project. But also how we can give them the right authority empowerment, so they can take decisions in the project without having to go to headquarters or to their district office too much so that we can move the project along and keep it moving and giving that extra authority, extra empowerment to keep the project moving. The third method it's the project arrangement and that's talking about different resources. You know, in the second method we talked about the human resources for the project team. The third would be other resources like the delivery method any MOAs, MOUs between the different agencies or interagency agreements consultant agreements. Any necessary contract or agreements or any documentation that needs to be done and coordinated within the different stakeholders so that we are-- all of the stakeholders are on the same page and keep the project moving forward. So here is an example of success factors, critical success factors within the five dimensions, five DPM. So like I mentioned before an example for schedule we had one of the projects that was researched in this product was a Utah DOT project in which they had a constraint. They had to finish the project by a specific date in 2002 because of the Olympic Games at that time. Also, in the context dimension getting, for example, if there's an issue in terms of not having the right capacity, contractor capacity to take on a project and a big project and a complex project and being able to meet the DBE requirements set by Federal Highway trying to get some waiver at least on the federal aid portion or on the whole federal aid project to not meet that DBE goal but also based on that contractor capacity for that specific project. Okay. So the last two methods are the early cost model and the finance plan. So this is something that we required in our major projects over 500 million. It's something that we're encouraging DOTs to implement on any complex project. It's something that we see a lot of value to being able to map out the cost of the project, the estimated cost of the project but also the funding sources to cover those expenses throughout the lifecycle of the project. And so it's pretty much that process to map the cash inflows and outflows and what kind of funding sources are available and what kind of funding gaps we need to cover to come up with innovative financing ways to cover those funding gaps. And then finally, the last method it's the action plans, the targeted action plans. This is a very important method that summarizes the previous actions and results from the other four methods. And it's a way of making sure that we're overcoming any potential issues, any potential complexities on the project. And tying those back to the critical success factors that were identified in the first method. So it's a way of being proactive thinking ahead about potential issues, potential milestones. And so contract requirements and what kind of actions we need to take at this point in the immediate future in the long-term to avoid any obstacles in the project. And so the next slide it's the thirteen recommended execution tools. These are thirteen tools that were observed in the research portion of this product throughout different projects and different lessons learned were documented. And so this execution tools or strategies or practices were observed and were consolidated into this product as good successful strategies or practices to be considered on any complex project. And so they form incentives and disincentives among not only the schedule dimension but also related to other of the four dimensions. Also performing a risk analysis which is something that we also require on major projects, but we're also encouraging to be done on other types of complex projects. Co-locating the team doing design and construction which is being done out of the design-build projects or megaprojects. And also establishing public involvement plans. Not only during the NEPA stage but also keeping this as part of the construction ongoing work of the project to keep the public involved and informed of the activities. And giving them that participation to be part of the decision making of the project so they can feel that ownership in the decision making of the project. So here are some of the DOTs that are implementing the R10 product. We had two rounds of implementation opportunities one in 2013 and the other one in 2014. For example, as you're going to hear from Michigan some of the things that have been done so far in the implementation of the product, for example, Michigan developed two PMPs for two of their major projects, incorporating some of these methods and tools into their PMP to further establish that as part of the delivery of the project. So you're going to listen to more details about that, about some of the R10 tools and methods that were implemented and incorporated in those two PMPs. Also, New Hampshire DOT is using R10 bringing this context dimension and putting this into making sure that the NEPA document considers any context factors. For example, North Carolina DOT is also defining the scope of their NC-54 corridor project in the Raleigh area. So they want to use this product to better define the scope of that project and also come up with better strategies to define strategies to define scopes for all of their projects. And then also, for example, Washington DOT they're interested in using this product and they're using this product to come up with some standard way to identify the delivery methods for the projects. So they want to have considering all of the five dimensions and all of the tools and methods to be able to come up with some standard method to recommend a delivery method for their projects. And that's all I have. This is my contact information, email, telephone number and also a link to the SHRP2 website with additional information. Feel free to contact me with any questions or comments. And there's also in the chat pod in the menu where you can download files, there's also a file, a flier that has the round seven, the SHRP2 round seven products are going to be offered next year as part of the implementation assistance program. This is going to be the last round of implementation opportunities funding and technical assistance opportunities. So I encourage you all to take a look and see if there are any products of your interest to your DOT to consider and apply for. And with that, if there's any questions, if not I'll get it back to LaToya and Sue.

LaToya Johnson: All right, Sue, I'll just turn it straight over to you. It's all yours.

Sue Datta: Okay. Thank you. Can everyone hear me? I wanted to say thank you for having us. We are very excited to be a part of the R10 5DPM process and we had 2 megaprojects in Michigan that we applied the process to. I am the project manager for the I-75 project and I'm going to focus in that in the last few slides. My colleague Terry Stepanski manages the I-94 project and I will try to go through his as well. And hopefully we can answer questions and you'll find this helpful. So I-75 within the state of Michigan is a freeway that was constructed in the sixties and did not have any major upgrades. It goes from about Florida to the UP and it has both within Oakland County which is the project limits is both a depressed and at grade freeway section. So it has a lot of different milestones there. It's currently a six lane facility, three lanes in each direction and like I said one is the-- the northern part is more at grade. And the southern part is depressed. It covers eighteen miles within this county with eleven interchanges going through six communities. We have one freeway to freeway interchange although it is not included in the improvement of the megaproject. We have 51 structures and we're going to replace them all. It is a large scope of a project that's been going on for a long time. As you can see, we started out at a bigger scope doing the whole county and then we kind of stepped back. We had a partnership with our NPO to study it and then we jumped into NEPA. And after NEPA we had a little time period where we kind of refined it a little bit with an engineering report. And then we stepped back, again, and kind of looked at maybe there is some innovation out there that we could apply, and then continued on with our community esthetics which we started during NEPA. The scope of work for this eighteen mile project includes reconstructing the three lanes and adding on additional lane as a peak hour HOV lane only. We are going to reconstruct a fairly large interchange at square lake and at fourteen and twelve mile as well as separate some ramp movements near the I-696 interchange that I mentioned before that is not a part of the project but the service drive area is. We're going to upgrade all of the freeway geometrics. Like I said, this has not been a major improvement since it was constructed in the sixties. We're going to replace all of the bridges, reconstruct the service drive, improve the drainage. We're going to add carpool lots, upgrade the ITS. The total cost for the project about a 15, 16-year process is about $1.3 billion and this is an all-encompassing cost. Due to the funding limitations that we had because we had this megaproject and we actually have two other megaprojects in the Michigan metro Detroit area, we had to find a way to fund it. So we broke up this project into eight construction segments. And the first two construction segments don't line in succession. One is 2016 which is at the north end and one is at 2018 which is more near the 696 interchange and the rest of them fall into succession. The reason we did it that way is the two segments-- once you construct them you would see a real improvement in operations and crashes. So the schedule right now is we have submitted our ISP to federal highway, our updated access justification report. And we had a request for qualifications posted two weeks ago. We received the SOQs and we're going to be meeting next week and scoring them and hopefully have an RFP out towards the end of the year. The quarter schedule, like I said, was broken up into eight segments. So we started in '16 and every even year we have a construction segment going on up until 2030. Now the odd years in between there in '17, '19. '21, et cetera, will be allocated to the other megaproject which is I-94 in Detroit. So concurrently we're going to be able to construct both projects. As I said the current status is we've submitted our re-evaluation and our IFP and our IHAR and they are with Federal Highway now. The PMP actually applying the five DPM approach was recently approved and we are looking to just finish getting the endorsement page, the signatures on that. That's a harder thing to try go get everyone's signature together. And with this project we are right now finishing the design-build books and the 30 percent plan. And as I stated we're going to have the RPF probably late this year with an award in spring/summer next year. So we've been through this process with the R10 workshops since 2013 for both projects. And we were able to through the help of the consultants and Carlos and everyone try to figure out how we could do this because this was new to us although some of the things that we found that is we were thinking of some of the items but we just did not know how to translate them. So the R10 process allowed us and gave us the outline to do that. So we were able to kind of look at what the key development points were and we also looked at the plan as it was laid out. And one of our biggest issues, of course, was the financing because the cost of both projects was in the billions of dollars. So we got a lot of good information when we did the workshops that started on it and it helped us focus really our-- we might have always been on the cost scope and schedule, but we didn't really have a name for the context portion. We knew about financing but we might not have always included it in the discussion. So financing and context were the two pieces that were really integral for us to develop these PMPs and started thinking about how to plan them out more. So that as well as risk management which was the thing that we were able to use. So with the early financing part we were able to sit down with our financial people and they were able to put down both projects and balance the budgets to see how they all worked together. One of the more challenging items with the R10 and with trying to do the context and the financing is sometimes it was hard to apply or understand to a smaller average sized project. We haven't fully vetted it but when we started doing that, you know, megaprojects are unique because they have so many aspects to them and some of these things are major concerns. So with the smaller project financing might not be as big of a concern and context may not because what we did find out during the process is context sometimes within these projects feed off each other and then they get tie barred together. So they kind of become each other's issues. What we did find is going through the complexity mapping with the project teams became very useful. We're finally able to visualize what we were thinking and knowing but we got to see it. And then we had like more of a map and how to address it. And we did it a few times during the process with the team so that really helped us focus in on what we had to do and how we had to do it. Now, I'm getting to the I-94 slides which are my colleague Terry's and I'm sure he's on and I don't know if I'm going to do them justice or not. But from my understanding for the I-94 project they did have a lot of contextual issues, maybe more so than my project because the city of Detroit was moving towards multimodal and so is the constituency. And it had been going for a lot longer probably than fifteen years. So there were a lot of people out there wanting to be involved and wanting to turnover and hear more about it. So one of the things Terry did was he developed a strategic plan to deal with the context and they had a 90 percent success rating on their public engagement process. And I believe this used their plan that they developed and put in their PMP and it continues to today and they are still ongoing. They'd had many tools to engage the public. They've had stakeholder meetings in addition to public meetings. They've done surveys. They do newsletters. They have media roundtable discussions. So their project, their action plan seems to help. And it looks like they're getting a really high success rate. The groups they have Facebook subscribers and they have next steps. They're thinking ahead and they're listening to what people say and they're developing it even further. And they have some opportunity to do that right now. And I guess that will change however it needs to change and be reflected in the PMP as time goes on. So that's all I had.

LaToya Johnson: Great, Sue. Thank you so much and thank you Carlos. Great presentation and introduction to some examples of how the R10 is being implemented in at least one state throughout the country. So thanks, again, Carlos and Sue for exposing us to R10 and how Michigan DOT is using it. I think that's a great example of how Terry is using that on I-94 how that critical success factor was identified and then a project action plan was put into place to make sure that they accomplish that success from that critical success factor. So with that we will open it up for a few questions before moving on to our last presentation. And I see one comment so far from Mark and as I'm talking definitely begin to call in and continue typing into the chat pod. So just to kick us off Mark Sullivan asks, "Can we provide some examples of good project action plans?" And I'll look at Carlos.

Carlos Figueroa: Yes, Mark, for example, let me think about a good example. I would say a lot of the workshops that we have done we see a lot of the context in the financial dimensions as rated as the most complex. So things as identifying any funding gaps, identifying any potential funding sources. For example, a couple of weeks ago in Alabama we had a workshop with Alabama DOT on the I-10 Mobile River project. And so they were talking about a type of specific state bonds and so they were not sure if they could issue or get access to issue those bonds because of the specific condition or constraint to get access to those bonds. So they talked about the different things that they needed to do like assign a champion within the DOT to coordinate with that specific section on the Alabama government and come up with, I guess, ideas to see if the scope of the work would meet the criteria to issue bonds and being able to fund the project that way as one of the funding sources. Another example would be in the context arena, for example, identifying a public relations person like a specific champion within the DOT to be the champion with the public, different stakeholders and keeping the public informed about the status of the project and the different stages of the project. So that's two good examples that are related to that method five the action plan and also assembling the project team.

LaToya Johnson: Thanks, Carlos. And if you want more information or more examples about project action plans or some of the activities that DOTs are doing I would highly encourage you to contact Carlos. He can definitely provide you that information. And even provide you with some additional resources from DOT's that are implementing the product. So you know Sue now and Terry that are implementing the product in Michigan. But Carlos can point you towards some additional contacts based on what you may be interested in implementing R10 on in your DOT or in your state. I think I see one more person typing, so while that person is typing Paula, can we go to the lines and see if there's anyone on the phone lines?

Operator: Certainly. There are no questions at this time but as a reminder, star one for phone questions.

LaToya Johnson: All right, thank you. And we'll give you guys a couple of more seconds. All right. And I see something from North Carolina DOT and it says "was the risk management planning component critical on your I-75 project? Can you share some examples?" So Sue, I'll shoot that to you.

Sue Datta: We did do risk management. We did a risk management workshop but we did it just for that segment one so that first three miles in the northern section it was critical. It has identified some things that we kind of overlooked. It really helped having the team together. Risk items-- beside the normal risk items that you would think with utilities and permits and whatnot we had a lot of input from similar projects. And we've had issues with geotechnical and that came out as a big risk item that we just didn't see. The other risk items that we normally have are with the outside stakeholders and those were all identified. But you know, right off the top of my head I would say the geotechnical was the first thing that came about that we just didn't think was an issue just based on the area. And because of some other people who are able to participate and who are in the room that was an issue that came forward. I hope that answers the question.

LaToya Johnson: Thanks, Sue. So with that, you guys can keep typing and we'll revisit questions after the next presentation. And if we don't get to all of the questions in the webinar we will definitely try to respond to those questions after the webinar. So let's go to our third presentation for today and it's from the Florida Department of Transportation on the I-595 express corridor improvement project. And we have Kelley Hall and Paul Lampley who are here to present for us. Kelley has worked for FDOT district four since 2001. She worked in Palm Beach at the operation center managing all of the maintenance contracts prior to joining the I-595 corridor improvement project in 2010. And now currently Kelley is the district four asset maintenance program manager as well as the I-595 operations project manager. Paul has over twenty-five years of experience with the Florida Department of Transportation. He served previously as the FDOT district project development engineer for nine years overseeing all PD&E projects in district four prior to becoming the 595 express construction project manager. And currently, he manages seven interstate express lane design-build projects in district four totaling over $800 million in construction costs. So with that I'll turn it over to Kelley and Paul.

Paul Lampley: Okay. Thank you very much. This is Paul Lampley with the Florida DOT. I'm going to start off with the first part mainly going through the construction of 595 and how we got to the operations period and then Kelley is going to take over with the operations period. So the corridor is 595 Express. That's just a picture of it there. These are the project limits. It's in the hard of Broward County which is in Southern Florida. There are 31 cities in Broward County. One of the major ones that most people recognize is Fort Lauderdale. Just to the north of us is West Palm Beach, to the south of us is Miami. The reversal express lane system that we built along 595 was 10.5 miles long. We also did another two-and-a-half miles of reconstruction on Florida's turnpike. So this serves I-75 to the west going to Naples. It also serves Sawgrass Express Way, Florida's turnpike, I-95 as well as the Fort Lauderdale International Airport and Port Everglades. So it really is the backbone of South Florida as far as an east/west corridor is concerned. These are some of the project components. It was three reversible express lanes. We had direct connections to Florida's turnpike. We have open road tolling so it is dynamically priced. We have a frontage road that runs along both the north and south side of 595 and that's state road 84. And it did not have a continuous connection so we made that continuous connection so people now can go east/west without having to get on the Interstate. We re-did the turnpike interchange. We built Broward County greenway. That's a bicycle and pedestrian facility that connects a lot of the parks in Broward County. It goes all of the basically from the ocean to the everglades and it connects a lot of the parks throughout the county. We did a lot of ramp improvements, auxiliary lanes, braided ramps, bypass bridges and sound barrier walls and that's a just few pictures of during construction or sound barrier walls, or open roll tolling gaining entry or interchange with the turnpike and when we were opening the Broward County greenway. This is how our team was organized for construction. We finished with construction now as I mentioned before. So at the top you'll see or in the center you'll see the Florida Department of Transportation. We entered a concession agreement. The agreement was for 35 years. Our lead we called them the corridor design consultant representing the owner DOT was RS&H. Our oversight CEI which was also our owner's rep was the Corradino Group. We had an agreement with the concessionaire. They hired their contractor Dragados. The lead designer was AECOM. Jorgensen was doing O&M and the CEI was for the concessionaire was HNTB. And then you see some of the lenders and advisors there in the slide. Here are some of the highlights of the project. It was the first design-build-finance-operate-maintain P3 in the state of Florida. We were running a parallel track with the Port of Miami tunnel. That was also a design-build-finance-operate-maintain. We actually closed our deal just a little bit ahead of them. It was the first availability payment P3 in the United States. We did do reversible toll lanes, six lanes for the price of three. It's dynamically priced. We do have a lot of emergency access infrastructure which Kelley is going go through at the end of the presentation. There's a 35 year agreement. The first five years were construction and during construction the concessionaire was required to maintain the facility, operate and maintain it and that was from right of way to right of way. It included both 595 and also the frontage road state road 84. We did do direct connections of the express lanes, reversible express lanes into Florida's turnpike. We have bus rapid transit. We purchased thirteen buses for the local transit agency which is Broward County transit. And then we have shared use drainage. And this is one of the thirteen buses that we provided for the county. We also built a park and ride lot facility. And then we also leased space for two other additional park and ride lots. This is one of the shared used drainage facilities. It's a gulf course that Florida DOT purchased. We purchased the course. We redesigned the course, we rebuilt the course. Once it was done we put it back on the open market and we sold the course. So our water from the Interstate 595 because it is an urban area we didn't have a lot of area to get our water quantity and quality requirements taken care of for our permits. So this golf course along with two others that we paid the owners to re-develop took the majority of the water from the interstate corridor and limited our need for additional right of way purchase. These are some of the innovations we found from the concession agreement and a lot of these were brought up through the concessionaire and their designer AECOM and their contractor Dragados. There were some bridges we were able to reuse. One was a third level ramp. It was a steel bridge called Ramp P. Also another third level ramp Ramp N we lifted that 18 inches and lengthened it 151 foot to be able to get the express lanes underneath. This says tamp but it's really ramp. It's a third level ramp T-1. It's at the turnpike interchange. We were able to widen that and salvage that bridge. And a lot of the crossroad bridges we were able to salvage in the corridor. We minimized the right of way impact. A lot of that was through the use of the three golf courses for our drainage. We minimized the utility impacts. The concessionaire's price came in at $200 million under DOT's engineers estimate. Our original estimate when we did a cost analysis was about 1.4 billion. And the concessionaire's price came in at 1.2 and that was through a lot of their own innovations. In the end, we had less than one percent added work. The DOT added a sound barrier wall in one location for a community where it had originally shown a wall in the PD&E study but the problem was the people had ocean access and they didn't want the wall in that location. So we didn't have it in the concession agreement. We were able to add that a little later, put it back into the contractor and we added one lane on the ramp and that was predominantly the two things we added. And we completed construction with zero claims and we completed on schedule. These are some of the benefits of the P3 delivery purchase innovation like I was just mentioning. It advances the project delivery. You may be able to see some significant cost savings and appropriate risk transfer. And we did this in a time when obviously there was a recession going on. The unemployment rate in South Florida in the construction industry was over 25 percent. So for us it started out as a transportation project but it quickly became a jobs creation project. And then we have performance based O&M which Kelley will be going into. This is our initial project phasing and this kind of goes towards how we were able to advance the project. If you look on the left there's a list of fourteen projects down on the bottom left-hand corner. That's the way DOT originally envisioned building this corridor. The problem was we needed the additional capacity from the reversible express lanes. But to get the reversible express lanes we had to move out the frontage roads and then we had to move out the interstate to make room in the median to put the reversible express lanes in. So the reversible express lanes were actually one of the last components to be built in this corridor. So we were going to be under construction for about twenty years and the public wouldn't really see any relief until late 2020 past 2025. So this is one of the things or one of the ways that the P3 was able to accelerate the project. We took all of those fourteen projects and we put them into one P3. So we advanced the noise wall construction. We provided the capacity over fifteen years sooner than through our conventional pay as you go method. We reduced the MOT and the impacts to the community and the adjacent businesses. The other thing about the funding shortfall at DOT we had $685 million in our work program. And we knew that we needed about 1.4 billion to build this project. So it provided a mechanism for us to be able to fund the shortfall. This was a product schedule and the last two bullets here are really the critical ones. We completed $1.2 billion in construction in 49 months and we added zero days to the original schedule. And what's amazing is we didn't even add a weather day. There were zero weather days. Zero holidays. So it actually was a great success for Florida DOT and our FHWA partners. Here are some of the cost benefits of the P3. I mentioned it encouraged the innovation. We got long term quality because we do have a 30 year agreement. The economy of scale we felt like we got a benefit there. We do have a fixed cost contract for the design and construction. We also have fixed costs for O&M for the thirty years, the remaining thirty years. We do have renewal and handback requirements in the contract. And it provided a financial mechanism to fund the shortfall that we had. We did allow a lot of flexibility and design. I know that was mentioned by some of the other presenters. We did have a huge public outreach program. And we were collocated with the contractor and the concessionaire and our oversight CEI. So that was all big benefits to our project. These are some of the successes of 595. We made no payments until the road was substantially complete and open to the public. That really incentivized the contractor and the designer to get the job build on time. Had less than one percent added work during construction and completed with zero claims. And we finished on the original schedule. This is just an example of how the maximum availability payments worked. We also had final acceptance payments. So from 2009 to until 2014 when construction was substantially completely made the Florida DOT made no payments to the concessionaire. In 2014 once they completed they got a series of final acceptance payments and that was the $685 million that we had programmed in our work programs. It was $50 million in milestone payments that were achieved once they got substantial completion. Those were eight items that provided relief to the public. Two of the items were sound barrier walls, completion of those. And then the other six had to do with movement and relieving congestion in the corridor. They achieved all of these milestones ahead of schedule so they achieved the whole $50 million milestone payment bonus. And then in blue is the final acceptance payments and they're adjusted for inflation every year. So it actually goes up but that's the way they were imbedded $66 million a year. This just shows how you how we looked at the appropriate risk transfer. And when we went through the negotiations for the concessionaire some of this moved around a little bit but this is how we ended up. So all traffic and revenue risk is with the department of transportation, the financing was the responsibility of the concessionaire. Florida DOT was responsible for getting the right of way. We did the procurement, obviously. So you can see how we broke this out. So some risk was concessionaire, some was DOT, some was shared. The shared risk a lot of that had deductibles. Obviously, we do have hurricanes in South Florida from time to time. So that's one thing that the industry came back and said we just can't insure against that so the state is going to have to take some responsibility. So to accommodate their request we went in and put a deductible on things like hurricanes. Should there be one of those during the construction period or during the operating period they would have limited liability. These are some of the economic benefits we saw during construction. We employed over 2,000 people per month. Over 275 local companies were employed on the job. We did great on our DBE. Our requirement for the contract was 8.1 percent and the concessionaire and Dragados they did great. They did over eleven percent in disadvantaged business enterprises and they actually exceeded their trainee requirements in the construction trade. They did 164 trainings. These are the express lanes. They're opened to all motor vehicles. That was the day before we opened them up and everyone's charged a toll. I'm going to turn it over to Kelley to do the operations and maintenance.

Kelley Hall: All right. Thank you, Paul. Okay. So Paul was the construction project manager and, of course, he was there in the beginning of the term. I was brought onto the project in 2010 to get comfortable with how the project was running and to get prepared for the operation and the maintenance of the facility. So the concessionaire was responsible for operations and maintenance from July of 2009 and they will be responsible until 2043, 35 years. It had performance based LNM which has actual payment adjustments and noncompliance points for issues that go on in maintenance such as the lanes not being available due to flooding. Also, for other issues, such as debris in the roadway or response time to stranded motorists not being in accordance with the DOT procedures. We put in a lot of performance measures that are a higher level. We wanted a higher level of service for our users. We added in at our traffic management center they have concessionaire operators that are there 24 hours a day 7 days a week. They are monitoring the CCTV cameras and they are dispatching road rangers throughout the corridor. They also are responsible of the rapid incidence team clearance which is large a tow truck and responsible for severe instant response vehicles. These are just an example, this is showing the schedule for the express lanes. It is a reversible facility that operates eastbound in the morning from 4:00 A.M. to 1:00 P.M. Monday through Friday and it stays eastbound on the weekend. Then the facility reverses to westbound in the afternoons between 2:00 P.M. and 2:00 A.M. Monday through Friday. The facility is closed between 1:00 and 2:00 P.M. and 2:00 A.M. and 4:00 A.M. These are just to reverse the lanes, to sweep the system and to do any minor maintenance activities that might be necessary. So before 595 Express came along this diagram shows you the average peak hour weekday in the eastbound direction along 595. You see a majority of the segments throughout the corridor traffic was moving between 20 and 30 miles per hour. After construction we did the same graphic and in the opening year of 2014 the speeds for the entire corridor were sustained average of 70 miles per hour. So there were more dips. There were no more slowdowns. It's just running free flow at level of service A most of the time during the peak hour. This is just to give you a comparison of the speed data in 2015 the current year. On the left is the speed distribution on the general use lane of 595. And then on the right is the speed distribution for the express lane. More than 88 percent of traffic in the express lanes are going between 70 and 80 miles per hour. The express lines are assigned for 70 miles per hour whereas the general purpose lanes are assigned for 65 miles per hours. Here is the 595 Express traffic in accordance with the toll transactions we've had on the facility. On the far right is September of 2015 with the 332,000 approximately toll transactions on the facility. As Paul mentioned, this is a toll facility that we have a sun path only. So people have to have a transponder to use the facility. We do not have a toll by plate option. September of 2015 was up 28 percent over September of 2014. So we are seeing an increase in traffic. Something that people always ask how we're doing is to ask about our truck volume. The 595 Express is the facility in the United States that allows truck traffic to intermingle with vehicle traffic and express lane. And it is a pilot project. We do have currently about 1.35 percent of the total volume being truck. The purpose for allowing the trucks on 595 Express is that the east/west thorough connects to our Port Everglades which is a major trucking destination on the eastern side. Since this facility is a reversible facility we did have to have a series of gates to not allow any wrong way drivers on to the facility. We have five barrier gates which are the hard stop fixed gates at each one of the entry ramps. And we have 34 breakaway warning gates. So in the beginning of the project we did notice that we had some operational concerns with regards to the warning gates. This is just a diagram to show you the warning gate history over time. In May of 2014 we made a decision to go ahead and shorten all of the gates by 18 inches. They're designed to go directly up into the lane line which is not the best length for people driving in South Florida who sometimes use that lane line as a designation as to if they're in their lane or not. The second shortening came after we realized that we had a problematic gate in the west bound direction which is called Ramp R3. It is on a horizontal curve and people were not just seeing the gates as they should when they came around the horizontal curve. We shortened those gates by approximately three feet so that they are stopping just at the midpoint of the lane. Then we did some brief stripping on R3 also in August. And then lastly in September of 2014 we went ahead and changed all of the banners that say do not enter from white background with red lettering to a red background with white lettering. So just going back to the diagram you can see so we had a dramatic drop of our warning gate hits down in here in September 2014. And we're continuing right around seven to eight a month right now. The five barrier gates that we have in the facility which is the hard stop which will stop a vehicle going 60 miles per hour on the facility at each one of our entry ramps has been hit twice since opening the facility. The first one was during construction. We do believe it was a construction contractor vehicle going the wrong way. And the second was just recently in August. We had a 94 year old man in a Lexus sedan that did hit three warning gates and then he came to a hard stop at the barrier gate. His vehicle was totaled but he walked out of his vehicle without a scratch. Paul mentioned that we do have a lot of emergency features along the facility which were at the request of the first responders which was JV Fire Rescue. We have five emergency access gates which are longitudinally sliding gates along the corridor with a 42 foot wide opening that are opened remotely from our traffic management center to allow access for fire vehicles, FHP or emergency vehicles. We also have full risk which is rapid instant team clearance requirements of our concessionaire on the corridor. This is a recent last month event where we did have a small plane land on the facility. Rapid incident team clearance will require them to remove the-- to have a heavy wrecker in route within one hour and penalties if they do not comply. And if you'd like any more information about what we talked about today you can visit our website 595express.info and that's the end of our presentation.

LaToya Johnson: Thanks, Kelley. And thanks, Paul. Very interesting project. Very interesting P3 interfaces as well as incidents that have occurred on that facility since it's opened. With that, let's take a few questions. And I see that we have one so far in the chat pod. So, again, if you have questions please feel free to type them in the chat pod or call to the operator and we can get you on the phone line. And, I guess, Paula, if you could one last time give us some instructions for calling in.

Operator: Thank you, once again, it is star one on the phone lines for questions. As a reminder, please make sure your mute button is turned off to allow your signal to reach our equipment. Star one on the phone lines.

LaToya Johnson: All right. Thanks, Paula. All right, so first we have a question from Texas and it says, "Have you encountered a developer who wants to negotiate a change order by deferring the upfront costs by using future toll collection? For example, the developer says he will build an extra direct connector for no upfront costs as long as he can collect future tolls?" So, I guess, Paul, have you had any experience with maybe this type of stipulation so a part of a contract?

Paul Lampley: So when we did this when it was the first concession agreement we had done in the state of Florida so we looked at different options. We looked at a true toll option where the concessionaire would actually get the toll revenue. We looked at a shadow toll option where the concessionaire would get paid per vehicle in the corridor. And what we settled on was the availability payment, payment method. So what that means is DOT sets the toll rate. We collect all of the tolls. And then we pay the concessionaire back over a 30 year term. We make the payments monthly and then we have the final acceptance payment. So because this was new to the state of Florida we didn't feel comfortable with that true toll model or the shadow toll model. We felt more comfortable with the state controlling the tolls and setting the toll rate because what was important for us was maximizing capacity through the corridor. So we really needed to move traffic more so than we were afraid that a concessionaire or developer would be more interested in making revenue.

LaToya Johnson: All right. Thanks, Paul. And next we have a question from New York/New Jersey Port Authority, "How many noncompliance points were assessed against the developer during the course of design and construction? And did you use a dispute resolution board?"

Paul Lampley: Yeah, we did have a DRB. And we never had to take any issues to the DRB over the whole course of construction and also through the operation period, operation maintenance period that we've been in so far. We did have a lot of noncompliance points. And what we realized was because it was the first time we had done this type of contract they were probably punitive. We probably were too heavy handed. It was really weighted too heavily to the owner. So we had a provision in the concession agreement that allows us to use our discretion when we assign those noncompliance points so that's what we had to do throughout the life of the construction and also went the operation and maintenance period is really look at what the incident was. If it was a third party incident, somebody went out and hit a guardrail then the concessionaire shouldn't be in a noncompliance situation. They have an amount of period to respond and repair it. So as long as they got out there and responded to repair it in the appropriate amount of time then that was fine but we shouldn't go back and say you're in noncompliance because it was a third party accident. So we have had to go in and modify those tables and Kelley negotiated those with the concessionaire for the O&M period.

LaToya Johnson: Thanks, Paul. All right. And I'll give everyone a few seconds to type in any last questions. Paula, do we have any calls on the line?

Operator: And there are no questions at this time.

LaToya Johnson: All right. And I see North Carolina DOT, excellent. "How do you feel the project was completed with zero days added to the original schedule? Any instances to the contractor?"

Paul Lampley: Yeah, since the concessionaire had financed the project they had a certain amount of equity that they brought. And then they financed the project. Their internal rate of return was based on them finishing on a certain schedule and them being able to repay the banks and them being able to get their milestone payments or there were eight of those that totaled 50 million. So they had structured their deal with the banks on finishing at a certain time. So they were highly incentivized to finish ahead of schedule or on schedule so that they could meet their RRR and their commitments to repay the bank debt. So because we never made any payments during construction that was really the motivation for them to finish on time.

LaToya Johnson: All right. Thank you, Paul. Thank you, Kelley. I don't see any other questions or anyone typing. So thanks, again, for that presentation. Great presentation on I-595 project. And before we go to our last portion of the agenda I did want to revisit one question that came in after Carlos and Sue's presentation on SHRP2 R10 product and Michigan DOT's PMP. And I'm hoping that Sue is still on the line, but North Carolina DOT wanted to know, "Did you run the 2014 complexity map of I-75 and then run it for 2015 and were there any changes to that complexity map?" I know it was run and I'm hoping Sue maybe could just talk a little bit about the changes.

Sue Datta: Sure. We actually ran it in 2013 and ran it in 2014. I think August of 2014 was our last. But we didn't do it this year, yet, no we haven't. We want to. We just haven't gotten around to it. And there were changes. There were changes. The financing got better because we had a plan in place. So you could see the change between '13 and '14 as well as for context because we had identified and managed the context from '13 to '14. So I think once we do it in '15 we'll see an even more improvement with context and finance.

LaToya Johnson: All right, thank you so much. And thanks, again, everyone for the great questions, the participation. Presenters, great presentations, great projects. I'm so glad that you were able to come and share your lessons learned with the greater FHWA major project community. As the last agenda topic we wanted to spend a little bit of time introducing a new center here at USDOT. It is called the Build America Transportation Investment Center. And we have Mark Sullivan from Federal Highway's Center for Innovative Finance Support which Mark is the strategic delivery team leader. And on his team they are responsible for many of the public, private partnership activities as well as GARVEE bond activities, state infrastructure bank activities that Federal Highway has. Mark also wears a dual hat as the project development lead for Federal Highway to the Build America Transportation Investment Center. So I'm going to turn it over to Mark just to spend a few minutes introducing us to the Build America Transportation Investment Center. Mark.

Mark Sullivan: LaToya, can you hear me?

LaToya Johnson: Yes, Mark, we can.

Mark Sullivan: Well, great. Well, thank you so much for this opportunity to speak. I will take up very few minutes. This presentation is comprised entirely of screen shots that I took from the actual Build America Transportation Investment Center website. The BATIC, as we call here, recently launched this website in conjunction with several other announcements. And I want to draw your attention to the statement here on this homepage. And I do this with a bit of I don't know what the right word is but I hope you get a sense of my humility and embarrassment here when we read this statement. The Build America Transportation Investment Center serves as the single point of contact and coordination for states, municipalities and project sponsors looking to utilize federal transportation expertise, apply for federal transportation credit programs and explore ways to access private capital in public/private partnerships. You know, I think that is an aspirational statement. I feel, again, when speaking to a group of professional project oversight managers and engineers located in state capitals and offices all around the country this is demonstrably not a true statement because the opportunity to utilize federal transportation expertise is very intentionally distributed all around the country. There are thousands of people employed, hundreds of offices leased and staffed up in order to provide this function. So I want to start out by acknowledging that the department of transportation has established this. And it's something that is-- the statement here is not a universal statement of truth but I did want to talk about a subset of projects for which this statement may indeed be true. And I think it's important for you all to just kind of appreciate that this kind of aspirational statement is out there although even saying that implies that somehow the headquarters of the Department Of Transportation aspires to bring every function back inside to the secretary's office and it surely, surely doesn't. But anyway with all of those contradictions I just want to move down the homepage here of the BATIC website and just briefly touch on the BATIC's mission, a mission of expanding access to federal credit programs for transportation. And I think that is a major filter when you look at the potential universe of projects for which the BATIC is this kind of central portal. Applicants to TIFIA, applicants to Federal Railroad Administration's RIFF loan program are, I think, very much within the scope of the BATIC mission. And typically are projects that bring a number of complications and policy issues along with them. The internal organization here at the DOT involves a team of four people newly brought on board in the secretary's office. On this website you can link to their information and see their photographs and brief CVs and learn a little bit more about that crew. They are coordinating a number of folks here inside the department from all of the operating administrations. So the innovative program delivery office at Federal Highway Administration which, of course, has a somewhat similar function to the BATIC is really representing FHWA on all of the BATIC activities. And I don't remember if LaToya mentioned that one of my collateral duties now is to serve as a project development lead, or a PDL, for all of BATIC's Federal Highway projects. Right now, that involves two projects. So out of the thousands and thousands projects that are underway throughout this great nation I am a PDL for the Monroe Connector which is a project seeking a TIFIA loan, a project in North Carolina, outside of Charlotte. And also for the I-66 outside the Beltway project which is a hot lanes project that the Virginia DOT is currently in procurement. One of the questions that Virginia is asking is whether the I-66 project should be procured as a design-build, as a design-build-operate-maintain with something like a 15-year operating concession. And then also as a full 30-year, 30 to 50 year concession which is typically what we would call a full public/private partnership. One of the very clear missions of the BATIC is to explore the P3 option for projects. And if you look at the potential list of projects that the BATIC may be involved in and this will give me an excuse to go to the next slide here. Just, again, going further down that homepage you'll see a great emphasis on P3s. So these projects here, again, you could explore this homepage on your own time but there are about 20 projects highlighted here and they are essentially all P3 projects that were developed by the department with federal aid long before the BATIC ever existed. But nevertheless are the kinds of projects that the BATIC will be very interested in promoting over the coming year. I don't know that there is much to say without getting into a lot of details here. If you've got any specific questions I'd be happy to answer them. But I think for the vast majority of the folks on this webinar that this is likely to have minimal if any impact on your day to day lives. But there may be a lucky few who end up talking to me maybe in greater depth on behalf of the secretary's office. But I think I will leave it at that.

LaToya Johnson: All right, well, thank you Mark. And, again, we wanted to introduce the audience to the Build America Transportation Investment Center because it is a resource that's out there and it is available to our project sponsors throughout the country. So again, you have heard from Mark and he is the Federal Highway project development lead. So if you have questions feel free to reach out to Mark or Mark gave us a good preview of the website. Please visit the website. And if you think that this is a resource that will be of value to you, your transportation agency and/or project that you're working on we would definitely encourage you to use it. It's there for our project sponsors. So, again, Mark...

Mark Sullivan: Let me just say, LaToya you just reminded me of one thing because clearly I think we all appreciate that project sponsors, you know, make regular trips to Washington D.C. for a lot of reasons and those often involve meetings with the secretary's office or meeting in the administrator's office to talk about a megaproject. And I think really a lot of what BATIC will be doing is exactly what's always been done except now instead of meeting with the secretary's office you're going to be meeting with Andrew Wright or Roger Bohnert of the BATIC office. So in many ways this is just repackaging the resources that have always been available to project sponsors at DOT.

LaToya Johnson: Thanks, Mark. Thanks, again. So we will wrap up in the last couple of minutes. And, again, I just want to thank Mark and thank our presenters from our earlier spotlight. Thanks Caltrans and Allan Kosup who talked about the I-5 north coast corridor project. I want to thank Carlos Figueroa and Sue Datta who talked about the SHRP2 R109 product and how Michigan has been able to use that product to develop PMPs on two of their major projects. And also thank Paul Lampley and Kelley Hall who talked about the I-595 corridor project very much a success for FDOT being one of the first availability payment concessions in the country. So, again, thanks to our presenters. Great presentations. And thanks to our audience great questions and great interest. As we close I just wanted to let you know that we have our upcoming webinars tentatively scheduled. Our next joint DOT Federal Highway webinar will be Tuesday May 10. And then our quarterly major project webinar which is our internal Federal Highway webinar will be Tuesday, February 2. If you have ideas or suggestions for topics or presenters that you would like to see, if you're doing something exciting in your state and you want to share it or if you know of a state that's doing something exciting and you want to hear more about it definitely contact me and we will try to line up those presentations. We're always looking for ideas. And also in that webpage you see the link to our website where we are archiving previous quarterly webinars that we've done as well as where this recording and PowerPoint presentation will be posted within the next couple of days. So please visit that website. If you want to listen to this webinar again you heard so many good things you missed a few things, you didn't get to write them down. Or if you want to see some of the presentations that we've done in the past. So as we close up I want to say thank you, again, and I want to point you to the polls that are on the screen. So if you could just fill out the polls and let us know just give us some feedback about our webinar and maybe how we can improve it in the future or some topics for future webinars. So, again, thank you to the audience for participation and thanks, again, for all of our speakers. We hope to hear from you, again, in May for our next quarterly webinar. Have a great afternoon everyone.