New Ideas in the Old Dominion

by John Schneidawind, vice president of public affairs, ARTBA

Stephen Brich was named commissioner of the Virginia Department of Transportation (VDOT) in January 2018, taking control of the third largest highway agency in the country. He oversees a $7 billion annual budget and a team of 7,700 people responsible for designing, building, maintaining, and operating the state’s more than 59,000 miles of roadway, 21,000 structures and bridges, six tunnels and three ferry systems.

Brich has 26 years of experience specializing in traffic engineering, safety, operations, transportation planning and research. Prior to VDOT, he was vice president at a major consultant’s operation with responsibility for leading strategic planning relating to surface transportation.

The commissioner sat down with ARTBA Vice President of Public Affairs John Schneidawind for an extensive interview on the Commonwealth’s transportation goals. Here’s an edited transcript of that conversation.

Q: Can you give us a snapshot of the state’s transportation program?

A: So just for a quick overview, for Virginia over the last six to seven years, we’ve almost doubled the size of our program overall for construction, and we’ve gone from roughly $10.4 billion to $19.6 billion. I want to say from 3,700 projects to 4,700 projects. And that doesn’t include our P3 program.

The state, recognizing that at the time the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) was just being contemplated, everyone was of the opinion that nothing was going to get done. So, Virginia took it upon itself to “right size” our Commonwealth transportation fund and increased that fund quite significantly, indexing to the Consumer Price Index—the gas tax. We took a look at our retail sales tax and our motor vehicle registrations—those are the big three tax sources that Virginia has—and we restructured that program. In August 2021, it passed our General Assembly.

Q: Now that we are in year-three of the IIJA, how have the historic levels of new federal investment helped shape your state program?

A: I won’t dismiss the IIJA because certainly that is a source of funds, but when I look at the federal program overall and its impact back to Virginia and being in an uplift of 20 percent, it was not as significant as the state’s additional revenue we were able to create.

Now having said all that, we know that as IIJA came on board—and coming out of COVID—inflation ran hot, very hot. And so, when we have inflation running on some commodities of almost a 50 percent increase, and with labor costs soaring, it really took a toll. For example, at the Hampton Roads Bridge Tunnel, we’re consuming one-third of the stainless steel in the country. And so, if it wasn’t for the IIJA and if it wasn’t for the state resources, we would have a reduction in our program… We didn’t stop our projects; and we kept our workforce working.

Starting in spring 2021, we were already putting together a five-year plan of what bridge investment would look like over and above our bridge formula program already in place. As a result, in January 2022, we were able to take to our board the first year’s sets of projects to be able to advance those monies—which is less than 60 days of the president inking the IIJA—and having a set of projects that were ready to go.

Q: How are you balancing demands for new capacity with the need to maintain and improve existing facilities?

A: In Virginia, we have two sets of program areas— construction and maintenance. We have a SMART SCALE program that prioritizes projects across the state based upon congestion, safety, the environment, economic development, and opportunities. So, there’s five sets of criteria. Virginia requires that we’re a maintenance first organization, or a maintenance first state. And when we have maintenance needs that exceed the budgets that we put aside for the maintenance program, we have something called crossover, which takes monies out of the construction program, builds it into the maintenance program for that year to make the maintenance program whole.

Q: What role does alternative delivery play in your program and how do you see these methods developing in Virginia?

A: I think we can classify alternative delivery in a couple of different ways. The P3 development and delivery model is one mechanism, but we also have a very robust design- build program.

We’re looking at the P3 program for major initiatives that have regional significance, but also can attract private investment to solve a regional issue. In many of the cases that we’ve been very successful with in Virginia, we’re looking at models that do not require a public subsidy for major system enhancements. What I mean by that is really looking at the Express Lanes or HOT lanes and expansion of the HOT lane network that’ll provide alternative mode choice to travelers, while still giving a free option to those who elect not to take that facility. In Northern Virginia alone, we have nearly 90 miles of Express Lane networks in operation, and we’re looking at about another five or six miles to be able to close off from Springfield interchange to the Woodrow Wilson Bridge.

We’re looking at a unique project on Interstate 95 from Springfield to Opitz Boulevard to take the reversible roadway in that section and turn it into two-way traffic to create bidirectionality in that segment.

We just opened up the Fredericksburg extension, which is another 10 miles, and that’s operating beautifully. We’re seeing travel time savings of 30 minutes to those people who take the Express Lanes and 20 minutes travel time savings for those that are in general purpose lane. So, it’s really been a big benefit back to both those who are willing to pay for it and those who remain in the general-purpose lanes.

Q: What about design-build?

A: We have a very robust design-build program. When I came on board, we were very heavily design-build-oriented and that was really to get projects out the door faster, allow the contractor to have innovation as well as share risk back to the project. But what we see is that when we do a lot of predominantly design-builds in the Commonwealth, whether it be our engineers or the consulting engineers that do not play within the design-build space—we tend to lose the

skill sets that are needed for the design on the Interstate systems. And I’d say most of our design-build work is on the Interstate system.

So, in an attempt to be able to make sure that they’re qualified consultants out there to do the design work and not just the design-build engineers, we’ve taken a much more balanced approach. This year alone, I think we’re going to do about more than a billion dollars in design-build projects itself. And if I look at the other lettings that we have, it’s about $2 billion in regular construction. So, about a third of our program is going to be design-build, which are major, major projects.

Q: What trends are you seeing in your workforce and what are you doing to attract and retain talent?

A: Workforce needs are a challenge and continue to be a challenge for many in the construction industry. The trends are clear across the board: everyone’s fighting for the same talent whether it’s the consultant industry, the contracting industry, our labor workforce, ourselves, the maintenance guys, or transportation operators that are using heavy equipment. Everyone’s fighting for the same resources.

During COVID, there was a very strong challenge from Amazon for anyone that had a commercial driver’s license, to be able to deliver packages. We were fighting for the same talent. Why go out and plow snow for a set salary when you can be in a warm vehicle and delivering packages by yourself at twice to three times the salary that you were making as an operator? During that time period, we really saw an exodus, and we frankly had to increase our salaries for those individuals to retain them but also come back to the workforce.

We’re also seeing that millennials are starting to enter the workforce more. We’re going to see them work for us anywhere between three to seven years. When we have someone with three to seven years coming and going into an agency that has prided itself on long term sustainability of its employees and has passed down knowledge or has gained knowledge over a period of time, that becomes a challenge for us on multiple levels.

It’s how we recruit people, how we retain those people and more importantly how do we provide knowledge or pass the knowledge down to those new employees or to the consultants and contractors working for us. We’ve just finished up our fiscal year 2024-26 business plan, and we have one whole section that deals with strengthening our workforce, from the recruitment end, to the retention end, to the knowledge transference end.

Q: What are some ways that you stay in touch and work with the industry in your state?

A: I’d say we have a very good relationship with both our consulting industry representatives and our contractors. One of the things that I’ve done to foster that relationship is if they ever have an issue, they can certainly pick up the phone and call or if they have a burning issue that falls outside of a regular meeting, we’ll champion a small group of people to get around the table and whiteboard an issue. Can they deliver the program that we have? That’s what keeps me up at night.

And for the most part, it’s that open dialogue that has really come a long way to making sure that we’re in touch with industry and industry is in touch with us. Gordon Dixon from the Virginia Transportation Construction Alliance and I have a standing call every two weeks—it might be two minutes; it might be 30 minutes. But at least we’re able to touch base.

Q: When you started out in your career, did you envision yourself running a state transportation agency?

A: I never thought that I’d to be a commissioner of VDOT at any point in my career up until I was asked if I would consider it.

One of the things I’ve told the younger staff or new people coming into the organization is to learn something about everything and understand it. It’s more than just engineering. There’s social science, but also partly business. One of the best things I did was go outside of the DOT and get private sector experience and be able to bring that business mindset back to the organization and at least think of things in a different way rather than the standard way at VDOT.

Q: You sound like a private sector guy, you don’t sound like somebody who’s grown up in the in the regulatory environment.

A: I have more time in VDOT than I have in the private sector, but maybe the private sector was a lot harder on me and so I’ve got dog years on that one.