Does the rail corridor planning incorporate high speed rail? Or would that be a separate project with its own set of environmental enhancements?
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.
For CMGC is billing done on a unit price basis? Or is the contract lump sum?
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.
What strategies did you conduct to balance between rail, highway and community?
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.
What was the decision process Caltrans used to expand the need and purpose to include bike, pedestrian and other coastal concerns?
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.
Why did you select CMGC rather than design-build? And how does this help on the complexity of your project?
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.
Do you have documents posted online or available to send that provide an overview of your project development process?
Did you apply any five dimensional project management to this project? And if so how?
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.
Can we provide some examples of good project action plans?
Yes, 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.
Was the risk management planning component critical on your I-75 project? Can you share some examples?
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.
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 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.
How many noncompliance points were assessed against the developer during the course of design and construction? And did you use a dispute resolution board?
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.
How do you feel the project was completed with zero days added to the original schedule? Any instances to the contractor?
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.
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?
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.
