Five years ago, under a different president, the nation’s capital began to undergo a complete facelift under unfamiliar circumstances. In July 2000, the District of Columbia Department of Transportation (DDOT) and the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) contracted with VMS Inc. of Richmond, Va., in the first-ever urban performance-based asset management project known as “D.C. Streets: An Innovative Partnership for Better Roads.”
Under this five-year initiative, it was the responsibility of VMS Inc. to manage and preserve 75 miles of roads that constitute the district’s portion of the National Highway System. Such roads include segments of the district’s heavily traveled I-295 and I-395, as well as gateways such as Canal Road, Wisconsin Avenue, Pennsylvania Avenue, Independence Avenue, Constitution Avenue and others.
Also included in the contract was the maintenance of assets such as tunnels, bridges, curbs, sidewalks, gutters, retaining walls and roadway cleaning, and in the winter of 2001-02, snow and ice control was added. With this contract, the D.C. Department of Public Works was able to focus its limited resources on maintaining over 1,400 miles of other roads and neighborhood streets in the district area. Eighty-percent of the $70 million was funded by the FHWA, while the remaining 20% was funded locally. As the contract approached completion this July, a six-month extension was granted, prolonging the initiative into the beginning of 2006. While the pioneering contract approaches its final stages, the advantages of such a contract have become clear, nearly assuring a place in the future for this growing trend.
Terms and conditions
Under a performance-based contract, the owner defines the desired outcome of the asset, while the contractor agrees to meet or exceed this defined condition. According to Simon Rennie, DDOT project manager for D.C. Streets, the largest benefit of this sort of contract is that there is a single budget for several maintenance categories with a single contractor. “When a service is needed, with one telephone call you can get the service delivered,” said Rennie. “That in my mind symbolizes the advantage over public works doing (the job).” “Some maintenance services are naturally unexpected and usually there is not enough money in the budget to take on stuff like that,” continued Rennie, “generally it gets deferred. This contract makes the money available for many different categories of service.” With this contract, damaged areas caused by natural disasters such as Hurricane Isabel in September 2003 and the heavy snows that have pummeled the D.C. area were attended to and restored quickly.
As a part of the contract, VMS Inc. was responsible for maintaining 344 lane-miles of pavement, 118 bridges, 2,950 drainage catch basins and 7 miles of drainage ditches, 450,000 ft of curbs and gutters, eight tunnels, 108,270 ft of guardrail and 51 impact attenuators.
“We do everything that the DOT would do,” said Shannon Moody, communications manager for VMS Inc, “everything from filling potholes to simple repairs on the streets, picking up litter, removing and replacing trees, sidewalk (repairs) and snow removal in the winter.”
VMS Inc. has several other small-scale performance-based contract projects across the country similar to that of the D.C. Streets program. They maintain interstates in Virginia, Oklahoma and Florida—where they are responsible for U.S. 192, the Gateway to Disney.
Making the move from small-scale projects to the first-ever urban asset management project did not faze VMS at all. “It was great for us to be able to work in the district,” said Moody. “It was a new contract for everyone and it was exciting to be able to work in a city the size of D.C., as congested as it was and to face that challenge. It was kind of fun for all of us.”
An outcome-based contract such as D.C. Streets relies heavily on close cooperation between the public and private partners. The FHWA, DDOT and VMS Inc. developed a close relationship and had to work together in order to produce a successful outcome. “I think we all learned some various lessons throughout the project,” said Moody, “but the wonderful thing is being able to partner together and having folks come to the table and talk about issues so they don’t become something larger.” All of the partners were available and interested in the issues, and they were able to learn all of the lessons together, according to Moody.
Looking ahead
As the D.C. Streets contract approached its ending date on July 11, the DDOT and FHWA granted VMS Inc. a six-month extension, bringing the program to an end after the New Year. The initial contract will then most likely be broken into several smaller contracts, focusing on specific assets.
According to Rennie, tunnel maintenance and lighting have already been broken into separate contracts. VMS Inc. hopes and plans to be a part of the future D.C. contracts. “We’ve definitely enjoyed our relationship with the FHWA and DDOT and we’d like to continue,” said Moody.
While the future of D.C. Streets remains unclear beyond the January 2006 deadline, one thing is certain: Expect to see more performance-based asset management projects in urban areas.
Rennie also believes this new way of contracting will become more common. “Because we had no prior experience with performance-based contracting, this effort (allowed) us to be able to see this in real-time and to give us the opportunity to assess its effectiveness,” said Rennie.
“Under one performance-based contract, in an environment where things are constantly changing and there is no way to predict what is going to actually happen and to what extent it will happen, a performance-based contract puts resources in place so that an adequate response could be generated.”
