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Raw Transcript - CASE Web Tool

March 5, 2021

We will being today's webinar. Thank you all for joining us today. Today's webinar is What's the Best Contracting Method for My Project. An Introduction to the CASE Web Tool. Contracting Alternatives Suitability Evaluator. Thank you for joining today's webinar. Please listen to your speakers. You can dial-in using the dial information to the left of your screen. We will begin today's webinar. Thank you all for joining us today. Today's webinar is what's the best contracting method for my project? An introduction to the CASE web tool. Contracting Alternatives Suitability Evaluator. Again, thank you for joining today's webinar. Please listen through your speakers. If you are having difficulty, you can dial in using the dialed information to the left of your screen. In the notes pod the number is 866-434-5269. The access code is 2044 83 two. We will be asking questions throughout today's webinar and you can submit questions and comments in the chat pod which is to the left of the presentation and you can submit your questions and hit the submit button or that sent question button at the bottom corner of the pod. Again, we will be asking your questions throughout your presentation. Before we begin today's webinar, we would like to ask a few polling questions. The first question is, what organization are you from? The second one is, what discipline do you represent? If you choose other, if you could describe your agency or your discipline in the below pod. I will give you a few moments to do that. It looks like you are still answering. I will give you a moment or two before I close out the polls.

Okay. I'm going to end the poll. It looks like most of you have responded. Thank you for submitting your responses. That was helpful. Now we are going to begin today's webinar. I'm going to turn the presentation over to David the Senior Engineer on the Construction and project Management Team. David?

Thank you charity and thank you, everyone for joining us and responding to the polls. It's really great to see how many different agencies are represented, academics as well. Also to see the disciplines. It really takes a lot of disciplines cooperating to deliver to the contracting method and of course in P3's you have the special financing consideration. Really appreciate this great turnout and hope we can answer your questions. If not, we are available when you get our contact information at the end of the presentation. Welcome. This webinar, I titled it, what's the best contracting method for my project because that boils down what CASE is about. Contracting Alternatives Suitability Evaluator. We hope this tool, you will hear more about how the tool was put together. Let me introduce myself a little more formally along with my co-presenter I'm David Unkefer. I'm with the project management team. I serve as the alternative contracting methods lead for resource center and work closely with our headquarters contracting and administration along with others in our major projects office. Our office and resource Center will either support the CASE web tool technical support as it moves forward. That's how I got involved with this rollout webinar. We will explain what you about what CASE is. Join by Patrick DeCorla-Souza who is in our center for innovative finance support. He is the P3 program manager and Patrick's officer was one that initiated the building of the CASE tool. For various reasons but especially to help with connect contracting methods with P3 and long-term contracting practices. Also on we have support from Michael from Virginia Tech and I know him as QC. He was deeply involved in the building of the tool and what's -- how it was put together. They will help us in answering more of the detailed questions. I will take this chance to give a shout out to the team that built what was originally called the ACM toolset and also the team that is currently working with us and has helped us to move it to the government cloud. We will talk more how to access that and they have done an excellent job in helping us build something that you will find very valuable. An overview of what we will do today. Today's agenda. We will talk about the background of the CASE tool in terms of what was the value -- what was its purpose and value. Why we created it. We will talk about an overview of the tool in terms of how does it go about evaluating alternative contracting methods and the results it may provide you and your project teams. Will talk about an overview of the P3 -value tool which connects the partnership and aspect to the CASE contracting alternatives aspect of evaluation of the tool. Then will talk to you and show you some resources that are available to you that will be available to you related to alternative contracting methods and P3's and long-term contracting options. Let's get into the background a little bit. What was the value that we saw and the purpose for creating CASE? In the big picture, we as federal highways stored the federal funds along with our partners in that state devotees and public agencies. We recognize back in the 80s and 90s there were other contracting methods, alternative contracting methods that can save a significant amount of time and money and bring up other benefits that we will talk about. The purpose of CASE is to create a tool that supports the evaluation of contacting -- contracting method and short-term and long-term contracting methods. In other words, it helps you to look at that longer term in P3's. The objective of the case -- CASE project was to develop a suite of linked analytical tools and by that we mean -- we saw that tools were out there but nobody had collected the national best practices for helping to bring together what would help that analysis. Help teams that are trying to consider alternative contracting methods. We also brought together national best practices from FHWA, state devotees and others. We wanted to fill important gaps that existed in enhancing the different tools we found including as I said there wasn't a long-term option for looking at contracting methods that was very analytical. I want to mention here in addition to CASE we are also developing a national Highway Institute course that will be an alternative contracting methods overview and the CASE web tool and that course will work hand in hand. I guess I failed to do and want to be clear here. The methods that are covered in the CASE tool and we may go through them a little bit more as we go through here. The method included were the design build and progressive design build, construction manager and general contractor. Design build finance with short-term options and long-term we look at design build operate and maintain. Design finance operate and maintain. Why CASE? Again a little more detail. As far as the benefits we see that alternative contracting methods versus traditional methods can shorten project delivery. Reduce cost and schedule risk. Incorporate innovation especially innovation that brings the contractor or construction industries into the design as early as possible. We can also with alternative contracting manage lifecycle cost and performance that comes with the longer term contracting as well as conserving public sector debt through P3's where project financing can be leveraged. A highlight of some of the benefits. In the top you will see the big ideas we get more work in place with less disruption to the public when we can use an alternative contracting method. Recent study by federal highway showed that CMGC on the average of 60 % faster than design build. Design build low bid was 50 % faster and design build best value was 15 % faster significant savings in time -- warps -- sorry, someone is moving the slides. I don't know who was clicking the slides, please, don't do that. The second one talks about the cost benefits. With real data we look at Caltrans with their design build program in using alternative contracting concepts. They report saving $87 million or 9 % of the program over four years. With CMGC they report saving $291 million or 17 % over six years. How was CASE put together? We in the course of making sure we had a good product, we did a synthesis and existing methodologies that were used for project delivery methods or alternative contracting methods. We looked at CASE studies of leading DOTs. We met with subject matter experts and pilot testing of the tool with state DOTs to see what the results and we were testing and working on the web-based tool up until now and pulling it out. What we found in the existing methodologies was that DOTs choose alternative contracting methods for three primary reasons. Those reasons are to accelerate schedule, reduce risk through enhanced scheduling cost certainty and to address the complexity of certain projects and risk through collaboration because these projects are much more collaborative compared to design bid build. Performance measurements related to ACM's at that time was very limited. That meant creating a tool that could bring logic to the decision in terms of answering critical questions would be a good tool. That would be a good thing for us to put together as CASE. We found that the selection at that time and I think still today sometimes depend significantly on user judgment. What CASE can do is bring the judgment of experts to bear on your own project teams judgment and help give you that expertise in addition to your own. Case studies. The weight those were selected. We only chose states that had mature ACM programs. That were using more than one ACM type. Some of the ones I mentioned previously plus the ones you saw on the benefits slide. We chose states that had institutionalized processes and we could look at their manuals, guidebooks and policy documents. We looked at availability of performance data. These are where we went to develop case studies. Some of these agencies had their own tools and we also looked internationally at the Australian government which had some good information on P3 methodologies as well as the purple line transit in the Maryland, DC area. As far as supporting documentation, I wanted to point out to you -- Patrick will show you how to go to the site and at that site there will be a getting started button and from that button you will be able to access these documents. One is the guide to the CASE web tool which runs through the process of setting up the accounts that are necessary to access the tool online. There's a getting started guide that helps you with the technical, beginning, technical activities that your team will want to think about as they begin to do an evaluation. These are the tools that were considered as we put together the CASE tool. Colorado DOTs BDSM. Caltrans alternative procurement guide. That transit corporate research program had a guidebook. Value for money analysis. P3 tools you see there. Some of those are connected. Patrick will talk about those and finally the sharp are 10 project management strategies document information. Patrick, I will hand it over to you to moderate any questions.

Can you hear me David?

Yes.

Good. I'm looking at the chat box and the only questions were about the presentation and as Charity mentioned they will be available at the end of this webinar and also after the webinar we will be posting it on our CASE webpage and I will be explaining how to get there in a little bit. I don't see any more questions right now. As a reminder, if you have any technical questions or other questions, feel free to put them in the chat box and at intermediate points in this presentation we will be answering your questions. It looks like I don't see any more questions. We will move on -- is the CASE tool already being used is a question. Yes. It is being used by states where we piloted the tool in seven states. Some of them are using it as we speak. However, it was at that time call the ACM tool set. Now we have changed the name to contracting alternative suitability evaluator case and moved it to the U.S.cloud. You may see some differences. Those who are using it will be able to use it the tool on the CASE website and the cloud and the other website for the ACM toolset will be discontinued. The CASE web tool is available. We will continue in the interest of time. We can pause again for questions after I describe an overview of the CASE web tool and a few key outputs. In this segment, we are going to show you how to access the tool and the structure of the tool and some key outputs that will be of interest. When you go to that URL, here at the top, you will see that page. It's important you read the information at the top which specifies which browsers can be used with the tool. Other browsers would not support all the functionality of the tool. You need to use only the ones that are specified at the top. The rest of the note says, if you are using this tool for the first time, you need to click on that getting started link there in the top left. The reason you need to do that is because that button will take you to this CASE webpage on the FHWA website. At this website, you will see documents that you need to download and read before trying to access the tool. Accessing the tool is a little different because we are using a process called login.gov for your I.D.. This is the first time FHWA is using login.gov. It's a new process. You need to read that accessing the web tool guide to understand what you need to do to access the CASE tool. The second document is CASE web tool getting started guide. That is after you authenticated your I.D. Reading this guide quite brief will help you understand very quickly what you need to do to register etc. Then of course a more detailed guide is the third one you see listed. After you have read these documents, you will be ready to start accessing the tool. So you can go back to the page at the top, click on sign in on the center of the page and that will immediately take you to the process you need to go through to access and register at login.gov. If you are a federal employee and you have a PIV card it's very straight forward. You use your PIV card and your normal pin and get registered and at login.gov. If you're not a federal employee you need to go to the process of registering your email, creating a password etc. and login.gov authenticates you and you then will be set and you will be able to get to the tool. This is the first thing you will see because before you can use the tool, you will need to request an account. In order to request an account, you need to look for your agency in that first box. Select an agency organization. All the 50 states and two territories. Puerto Rico and District of Columbia are listed there in addition to other groups. You need to select your agency, fill in the name and email address and send that forward. If your agency is not listed, then there's a note at the top that tells you what to do. You go to help and send an email using the questions and feedback item on the menu. [Captioners Transitioning]

They have already registered, and we have somebody transfer the registrations over, so they will not need to register in CASE again. When your account is approved you are all set now to get back to the tool. We have got more detailed workshops that will go into the detailed mechanics of the tool. What we are doing today is simply giving you an overview so you understand what exactly the tool does, and what kinds of outputs it produces. You put in some project information and tell it your goals, and how important each goal is. In CASE web tool. The box in the middle is comprised of about six modules. Each has a function. It looks at your goals, and asks you several questions about your project, and about the context in which you are building the project. Based on your responses it calculates a score for each contracting method. You see in the first green oval that it will create scores -- you will go scores, and you will be able to compare and decide which one of those short-term contracting methods you want to use. If you look at the long-term contacting -- now I am going to talk about what is inside the new box. It is this humongous set of modules that take you step by step the process to get to your final recommendation on which contracting method would be most suitable for your situation. This is just an expansion. Here you can see the first step. You go to the top and evaluate long-term versus short-term contract. In this box you answer questions because they are compared to your goals. Then it gives you a recommendation whether we should proceed with considering a long-term contract and were weather short-term contracting would be better for your situation. If you decide you do not want to even consider long-term contracting the next step would be that box at the bottom left -- evaluate short-term contract. This is probably the most flexible of the modules because it will take you through a series of questions that will help you get to scores for each of the short-term contracting methods. The scores might be close in some cases, and you may decide -- in this module you will evaluate the severity of the risk and how each contracting method -- file effective each contracting method is. If you decided to do long-term contracting you can go to that blue box at the top in the center. You are simply evaluating whether you want to -- include private financing or whether you do not need to use private financing, and you can just do a design, build, operate, maintain with public financing. After you complete the module you will then go -- it suggests you could benefit from private financing. Then you would go to the module on the extreme right at the top where it asks you a series of questions which help you identify what the cost efficiency and schedule deficiencies might be. It also helps you understand and select what conditions might apply to your P3 project. The reason is that all of this information will be needed if you are going to do a more -- analysis. In the case of public private partnerships the fast -- requires that public-private partnerships be evaluated with benefit cost analysis or valuable money analysis if the project is seeking -- this tool can help you figure out the inputs you would need. After you complete that you could then go on to the next module, which is the blue box on the right in the middle.

You can use an XL spreadsheet, which is also incorporated in the tool, which will help you do that evaluation and produce valuable money analysis or benefit cost analysis or both. Out of that you will be comparing a public-private partnership with a public-sector comparator -- you would be ready to make a decision on the best method of delivery for the project. I will start to talk about the outputs from the first module, which is evaluating long-term versus short-term contracting. This is a sample of the output it produces. You answer a series of questions and get a recommendation. In this case the long-term contracting method -- at the bottom you will see that. As you answer the questions during the use of the module you will see this bar on the top to the right. That bar moves around depending on whether the answer to your question favors long-term or short-term contracting. This is something that is also included in the report and produced at the end of your analysis and evaluation. Let me break in and turn it over to David.

Thank you. I think we have answered most of the questions. I am not sure if we have a clear policy on separate consultant accounts. There were questions about consultants using the tool separate from a D.O.T. I just wonder if we have a clear policy on that yet.

What we are saying is -- we can revise this if needed, but right now if a consultant wants to get access to the tool they registered -- some other public agency sponsored. We will then give them access.

That was the answer that I tried to give, but I agree with you. We are looking for a tool to be valuable to those that deliver projects. If consultants are interested in a separate account I think I would just suggest you approach us using the contact information, and we will walk you through that. I see other questions here about pilot testing done on completed or ongoing projects.

My recollection is they use the completed projects in the workshops because they were interested in seeing how the tool measured up against the decisions they had already made. We were also evaluating the tool at the time. Michael could chime in here appear he says they did tests on project in the planning stage, so thank you. >> The P3 value is only for long-term contracting using public private partnerships, which use finance from the private sector. The tool actually already existed. We updated to make it consistent with CASE. There was a certain methodology being used. The P3 value does not address short-term contracting at all. That is the benefit that CASE brings. That is why it is an expansion of what we had started doing on the long-term contracting side. >> John asked does the tool produce a report that shows all the inputs, recommendations, and so forth?

Yes. It does produce a report which is quite extensive. It can be as much as 15 or 20 pages long. The reason is it shows you all of the answers that you gave to the questions in the tool, and all of the recommendations that came out of its. Also produces an executive summary about a single page where everything is in there, which is a summary -- the results of each of the module period it is a very useful report to keep as a record of how you came to your decision.

We are actually going to show a little bit of a report later, so you will see that. There was another question. Definitely the answer is yes. The tool will save everything you do online. Not really a black box. If and when you talk a little bit about things you can do to modify it. The report and all of the information -- I would like to see what else we have. Any project in Southern California that used a P3 process and was successful.

I would defer that to Michael. Michael, do you have any information on that?

Is the question whether we tested CASE on projects and -- I'm not sure I understand the question.

It is fairly specific about whether it was used for P3 products in Southern California and produced results that were consistent or helped.

If we're talking about -- we did not test them on those types of projects.

And maybe we should. There was another question with the tool elevated on a live project. I think you kind of got to that when you said it was tested on both completed and ongoing projects. Monica asked how much design information is needed in order to use the tool for short-term contracts.

It is very much a query based tool. You can ask serious questions in different modules. The tool can be used in very early stages of project development. Some information is known. In that sense some of the questions you are answering -- you may not know the exact answer to those questions, but you can certainly provide a response. You can have a little bit more confidence. The bottom line is you are inputting the information that the tool is requesting.

I see there is a couple more questions. In the interest of time should we move ahead and try to get them either through the chat --

Let's move on in the interest of time. We will get to those questions ladle or in the chat.

Short-term contracting evaluations, which is a piece that I will cover. It is less about the P3 and lifecycle. More about the traditional methods. Design build and its permutations. Basically after you have done the piece that Patrick just went through it is going to drop you into the short-term contracting evaluation piece. It will run you through the query.

When you get into the tool you will see it is all very laid out clearly. You are able to just walk to the questions that are essential to how you want to deliver the project goals and risks and so forth. Once you have input, the project information, it will create a ranking based on the put that you have put in for your particular project. If it generates results that are a little closer -- you are also able to enter in your own, and put them in and rank them as well. Than what you will receive is something that will help you -- and will basically put the 2 methods being compared side-by-side, and then you can have your team consider in more qualitative detail which of those methods seems like it is going to deliver you the project the best. Without, we are going to move to the long-term contracting piece.

Where we are now is the have decided to evaluate long-term contracting to see if it would need our needs. We go through a series of questions like we do for the other modules, and it comes out. In this case -- the questions help you decide whether an availability payment concession is -- if you have decided to accept the recommendation and go ahead and do an evaluation -- it asks you whether you want to perform a financing analysis that is a P3. If you are planning to do long-term P3 -- you are required to do the benefit cost analysis. In this module we hear we have long-term construction and financing -- we are trying to identify what would be the effects of P3. Again, you answer a series of questions. The model comes up with a range. In this case we are looking at timing -- it gives you a range of what you might expect. This type of information is important if you are going to do -- analysis. Similarly, for cost. You put in your conventional -- cost would be. It provides information by which you can narrow down within this range was specific value to use for a P3 cost item. We have gone through about five modules now within CASE. The first one, as I showed you earlier, reduces the recommendation on whether you should consider long-term contracting. The second module does the short-term evaluation. Go through the risk analysis and mitigation, and you get scores on how each of the contracting methods fares against the various risks that you have identified. At this point -- after you have gone through these five modules you can print out -- finally, a detailed accounting of all of the answers to your questions and also the inputs to P3 value that will -- without, we might have time for a couple of questions.

I think we have a couple of minutes. I do not see any specifically related to short-term long-term that haven't been answered. Let me go back to try not to miss one. Does the tool have any kind of database by project to use the tool, and show how it affects project performance when using the recommendations? I think the answer is there is the database --

We have not been using the tool for very long so we do not really know. Over time we will develop a database. This may be a good time to mention a related database that we are developing. We have a database that provides more information on how various contracting methods perform. You will need to compare the project and see if that type of project would be similar to yours and produce similar results.

Thank you. There is a database of project information being created, but they are not -- we definitely understand performance is something people are looking to quantify to some degree. Four times sake we are going to move ahead. If you get give us an overview of P3 value.

This is a spreadsheet model available within the CASE tool. In the middle is where we are with this module. A little bit of background with P3 value. Benefit cost analysis considers not just -- also benefits -- it only looks on the financial impact of the agency. They are concerned about cost and revenues -- in and benefit cost analysis it is not just the agency they are concerned about. They are concerned about broader society. It is a more comprehensive evaluation of the impacts on a project and P3 value does this kind of analysis for a public right note -- delivery method, and compares it to the similar analysis if the project is delivered with a conventional delivery method. Whatever that might be. We have training on valuable money analysis. This is the type of output you get from P3 value. This is the financial analysis. It takes all the costs for the entire life of the project, and makes comparisons for the conventional delivery method with the public-private partnership delivery method. You can see here on the top of the orange colors are the revenues. And then the expenditures below the zero line are the cash expenditures. You can see that. The present values are created for the public delivery method and the public partner -- partnership. We looked at the differences. To decide whether those financial differences are worth any other benefits that you might get from a public private partnership. This is the traditional method of doing an evaluation of a P3. What that does is -- a little more sophisticated evaluation of not just financial impacts, but also title benefits and cost. This is an example of what a P3 value produces. You have all of the cost. The benefits are above the zero line. These are costs and benefits over the entire life of the project. These are what are converted to present values and comparisons made for the P3 versus the conventional delivery method. The advantage of this method is you are considering -- you get a more complete picture. One benefits of P3's is the fact you can deliver a project earlier than you could with a conventional delivery method. You cannot capture the value of those benefits from earlier delivery. Like travel time saved or traffic accidents -- those cannot be evaluated benefit cost analysis can put a monetary value on those benefits so you can take them into consideration in your decision-making process. More information and training -- David, I will turn it over to you. 's the this is very detailed and quite powerful. Based on expert input. One question was how many projects were used so far to test this? Maybe you are more familiar. I know there were pilots in six or seven states beyond that. Are we aware of the detail?

I see somebody is answering questions here, but Michigan D.O.T. is talking about their experiences. We know it was used in seven states. Some other states I understand that are using it are South Carolina and Wisconsin, but this is only what I have heard. If anybody on the line is from those states they can talk about it. The tool is no. So far a lot of utilization of the tools because we have not made it available to the general public. It is only those seven states that originally piloted the workshops and the tools. Basically to provide us feedback.

I think there was extensive testing by the team that builds -- not necessarily on specific projects, but how the responses worked into scoring, and how those should be tweaked based on expert input from the documents we looked up prick what was the range of cost --

I am quite sure it is complicating smaller projects. I agree that the long-term contracting portion of this is probably more applicable for large projects 100 million or more. That is conditionally what -- they cost. >> If you get into the tool you will see that basically in your answering -- the questions may relate to project size, but in general they are just questions about -- different risks and other aspects that agencies typically use. If you like it is not giving you the right answer. Something we can probably consider as we look for enhancements in the future. There is a question about potential volumes. We will note that you and appreciate the input. At this point we are going to move to resources. I think we covered most of the questions, if not all of them. We wanted to cover what resources are available here to help you use the CASE tool. We have gone over some of this a little bit earlier, but if you go and click on the getting started or get started but then you will go to a place where we have put documentation. Kind of the 2 shorter documents. Probably the most extensive document that is also there is this guide for users and administrators and facilitators. It is over 200 pages. It has extensive information about how to use the tool. How you might facilitate a project team. How administrators can help us improving accounts for their agency so that you can essentially have some -- I do not know that we have any agency level administrators at this point, but we are ready to set those up if your agency would like to take that role. That is it for the short term options. I guess I just want to make sure to mention that we are hitting it at a very high low with this webinar. Somebody asked about seeing the tool in use. We would definitely like to help you with that, so we will try to sponsor as many as we can with the help and consultant support. Doing some training that goes into more detail. I can try to help you with that.
>> The P3 value tool. It has been in use for several years not appear probably at least five years, but we updated it to make it consistent with CASE. We have a new set of guides, as you can see here. Basic information you need to use the tool. User guide and concept guide which is much more detailed and frequently asks questions. It is an XL based tool you can download from our website are also available within the CASE tool itself. To download the documents he would have to go to the help tab at the top, and it will have all of the documents that you will have access to. The spreadsheet is actually available within the tool itself. We have a training available. It is currently free you just have to go to the national Highway Institute website and look for public partnerships -- you can sign up. It is available free of charge right now. Also, we can do it for specific states or local agency sponsors. They can sponsor a training. Of course, we are doing those virtual the right now. We are also able after the pandemic to come out and do what on-site. There are three modules in the training introductory. Basic information on public and private partnerships. Getting into more detail. The advanced portion is where we go into the use of P3 value. Make sure if you want to understand P3 value you take at least -- finally, in addition to the CASE webpage here are some of the resources with more information on various contracting methods for short-term contracting. There is a wealth of information on the website. The website of the resource center. For long-term contracting, public note -- partnerships. The Center for integrative finance support is the office that I work for. With that, we are ready to go for the poll questions.

Thank you. We have 2 questions for you. The first one is for public agencies does your state or local government have a published procedure or tool for evaluating short and long-term alternative contracting methods? I will give you a moment or 2 to respond to that question. If you could also expand on that. If your answer is yes if you could type in your agency beneath that. We will move on to the final poll of the day. That question is are you interested in hosting a CASE workshop? The responses are yes or no. If you could let us know that would be great, and we will give you a moment to respond to that. Thank you so much for responding to the poll questions. Now we will move on to the final portion of the presentation.

Thank you. If you could bring back the first poll for a second I would appreciate it. Our hope is if you don't have a tool we can help you. If you do you can use it to maybe confirm what you are doing. I appreciate the responses on whether you have a tool or not. We will try to delve into more detail on that. Let me also say that I think Austin from South Carolina had a great point. It is not just about the answer. It is about the process of deciding and how you bring people together to make that decision. We see the tool as a way to help that happen. Not only a decision support tool, but also a training tool. Especially for new staff. Another great point that was made -- I think we are very open to working that out. If you would just let us know I think we would be happy to try to work with you. Next poll. This is just to help us know if we can help you go further. We will potentially be trying to reach out to any that are interested. Just appreciate the answer to that one as well. The only other thing I would bring up since we have a couple of minutes is there was some questions about bias, and how that could be introduced in the use of the tool. I wanted to see if
-- if you want to respond to that. [ Indiscernible ] >> Michael Garvin can speak more to the question, but the administrator [ Indiscernible ] the questions are also scored. Those scores could be modified by the administrator of each agency to suit the needs of the particular agency. Of course, the tool in the end is only a guide of whatever comes out of it.
Just a way of going through the thinking process that one needs to go through in order to make the decision rather than something that gives a final answer. It is simply a way to help you think about the various issues that you need to think about in making the decision. I will let Michael talk some more about how administrators of individual states -- [ Indiscernible ] >> You can game the system by understanding how different alternatives are scored. [ Indiscernible ] you try to have a range of people in the room so when you are using the tool you are giving honest answers and input. >> If you want to add to my response about collaboration among [ Indiscernible ] on the development of the tool. My understanding as we collaborated --

That is correct. They are interested because they have a mandate from the fast act to have -- so they are very interested in this tool, and we collaborated with them. Other agencies. No. It is kind of oriented to the highway mode. I am sure it could be modified to whatever, but it would have to be a whole different set of questions or additions to the questions. The whole process would definitely be the same. Just what questions you ask will be different.

Thank you. I think with that we are ready to wrap up.

All right. Thanks, David. I wanted to thank everybody for attending this webinar. With dad, thank you all. I want to remind you that the webinar was recorded. The recording will be available on the same CASE webpage where all the other documents are. We will also place the webinars slides on the gate -- in case you have not had a chastens -- a chance to download the slides.

[ Event Concluded ]

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