You may have heard about the federal government’s National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, funded in the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law at $1 billion a year for five years. Michigan was fortunate to receive $110 million of those funds.
On this week’s Talking Michigan Transportation podcast, Steve Minton, an innovative contracts project manager at the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) who is overseeing the state’s NEVI program, outlines the process.
Some highlights and a timeline:
You may have heard about the federal government’s National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, funded in the 2021 Bipartisan Infrastructure Law at $1 billion a year for five years. Michigan was fortunate to receive $110 million of those funds.
On this week’s Talking Michigan Transportation podcast, Steve Minton, an innovative contracts project manager at the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) who is overseeing the state’s NEVI program, outlines the process.
Some highlights and a timeline:
Hello, welcome to the Talking Michigan Transportation podcast. I'm Jeff Cranson. You may have heard about the federal government's NEVY program. That stands for National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure and it was funded in the 2021 bipartisan infrastructure law at $1 billion a year for five years. Michigan was fortunate to receive $110 million of that money. So I had a conversation with Steve Minton, who is managing the NEVY program for MDOT. I hope you enjoy and find it as interesting as I did. So again, I'm with Steve Minton, who is a project manager in MDOT's Innovative Contracting Unit, and he's overseeing MDOT's portion of implementation of the NEVI program, as I mentioned earlier. Steve, thank you very much for taking time to talk about the NEVI program.
Steve Minton:I'm glad to be here and help provide some clarity and information around the NEVI program.
Jeff Cranson:Well, let's start first with your background. What did you do prior to managing this high-profile project and how did you make your way through the MDOT ranks?
Steve Minton:Sure, yeah. So I've only been in innovative contracting for a little less than a year now and I jumped into NEVI right, basically almost day one. So Ryan Mitchell, who was the Innovative Contracting Unit Manager at that time, said hey, Steve, I got the perfect project for you. Didn't really know what I was getting into, but it's been a really interesting and fun project. But before that I worked for MDOT in Metro Region for 25 years actually more than 25 years and did a variety of things. My last role there was as the Region System Manager, handling the program and the funding for the five-year program and a lot of other things.
Steve Minton:Previous to that I worked at the TSC level, projects and contracts administration. Had managed projects for a long time as a PM. I spent some time in construction as a construction engineer as well. During those times at the TSC level covered a lot of things. I worked at Oakland TSC. I worked at Macomb TSC. I worked at Port Huron TSC in different roles, almost all of it on the project side. Yeah, it was all on the project side primarily. And it did work a little bit in the region before all that in the geotechnical group, so doing soil checks and those sorts of things for that group. So pretty wide experience on the project side, covering from planning, design, development and then working at the program level and then getting into ICU, kind of getting back to my project roots, which has been not really fun, and getting back to that kind of satisfaction you get from kind of working on a project and seeing things get accomplished.
Jeff Cranson:Yeah, that's really broad-based. You were clearly doing a lot on the ground. So did a younger Steve Minton envision himself managing a project to help power vehicles that don't use gasoline or diesel fuel?
Steve Minton:That's a really good question. I can say yeah, no, no and yeah, even like an older Steve Minton probably wouldn't have said that either. So it's been a really interesting kind of project to work on, just because it is so different than anything else we kind of do at MDOT and just from the nature of the project itself to how we're contracting and working through those processes, which are very different. So, yeah, it's been exciting to really kind of take this on and try to see it through and get these chargers installed, and really that will be the definition of success is when we get these things up and running Well the President Biden and his administration have put a huge priority on this, both for environmental reasons and because some of our nation's largest industries, especially in Michigan, have gone all in on this.
Jeff Cranson:And we know there's been fits and starts, and some of it is because of the charging infrastructure. Some of it is other projections that haven't panned out the way people thought. People have all kinds of concerns, but we still need to be there. I guess you know when the train pulls up. So let's talk about the process, beginning with administering the grants and sorting through the submissions of inquiries, and then the RFPs and then procurement. And you know, given the uncharted territory, has it been difficult to maintain a schedule. Can you talk about those things?
Steve Minton:Yeah, kind of starting with your first thought there. So, yeah, I know, you know the automakers have maybe adjusted their kind of outlook in terms of the demand for EV. But the truth is, you know EV ownership is still going up each year, even though that might be a little less than what some of the automakers thought initially. But all the kind of information and data still shows that more and more people are buying EVs. So it is really critical that you know there's a program to get these chargers installed so it reduces that range anxiety that people have. And that's what NEVI is going to accomplish is to get these chargers spread throughout the state such that you know you can go on any of our what we call alternate fuel corridors and feel confident that you know you'll be able to charge a vehicle if you need that, anywhere, you know, around the state for the most part.
Steve Minton:So it is a different program. So it did come out of the bipartisan infrastructure law the allocated $7.5 billion for you know this, you know I guess installing this EV infrastructure to you know to help, I guess, get more confidence in this, you know, for folks to buy an EV and want to own them, and so $5 billion. Of that, $7.5 billion is for what we call the NEVI formula program, in which each state gets a certain allocation of it. In this case, michigan's getting $110 million, and the other portion of that $7.5 billion is the $2.5 billion is for, like, a competitive grant program that is community-based, and I think it's for charging and fuel infrastructure and I'm probably messing up the acronym, but I think it's an alternative fuel, part of that.
Steve Minton:Yeah, possibly. So essentially, cities have to submit applications and you know how they would use the funding to install, you know, alternative fuel infrastructure really. So, and I know some of the initial grants Lansing was one that received one from that program and other states got a lot of money too and I know like Texas received one for a hydrogen corridor. So it is, you know, not just EV focused in that case, but talking about the EV or the, the nevy portion of the program, the formula portion, where I'm, you know, working in that 110 million.
Steve Minton:So we are, we've initially kind of allocated that 110 million over, you know, the five years of the, of the authorization, and with round one, we're working on that right now and it's, it's been a real learning curve because this process is for to basically, you know, select and then get under contract companies that aren't traditional, let's say, infrastructure companies. In the way we think of infrastructure is like roads and bridges, and so you know us getting used to or not used to, but understanding, you know, kind of how they operate and then them to understand what our processes are. Certainly, we're trying to find that common understanding and so things such as having a request for qualifications, which we did. You know them submitting, you know what they thought would meet the requirements for that, having some kind of back and forth and then getting to what we call the request for proposal.
Steve Minton:We received 93 proposals from like 22 different you know project companies and you know there was still even a little bit of learning at that point that they didn't maybe submit everything exactly as we intended and had to follow up and say, okay, you're still missing this or still missing that, and then to go through the selection process. So our scoring. So this was a best value selection, meaning we are looking both at, you know, their technical requirements as well as their price. So it's, it's a combination of two on a hundred point scale. So we really were evaluating what really came down to is the primary driver of, you know, getting points in terms of that scoring process.
Steve Minton:Where is their proposed site? What are the amenities that are nearby? Proposers that proposed at locations like a 24-hour gas station would you know, score higher than somebody who had it, maybe had a Convenience store that was only open, you know, let's say, nine hours a day or 10 hours a day or something. But so most of the locations you know that we selected with initial round one are primarily at gas stations Summer at like a major grocery stores, like a minor, summer at a smaller convenience store, summer at restaurants. So it's it's really what's nearby that charging station, because it takes, you know, 20, 30 minutes to to charge up on a dc fast charger, and so you know what can you do in those 20 minutes? Is there food nearby? Is there a park nearby? Are there other amenities nearby?
Steve Minton:Those are the ones that really scored well in the ones that we end up selecting. So that's kind of where we're at now. We're at the selection stage. We announced those a couple weeks ago and Now we go on to the contracting stage, which you know is again another learning curve for these companies. You know they're not used to how we bond and how we have insurance requirements and and those sorts of things. So there will be some hand holding to get us through that process.
Jeff Cranson:Well, going to your point about the time it takes to charge and having something to do, I mean, that's why Meijer Corporation was, uh really out front on that a few years back, partnering with tesla on providing charging infrastructure, because they knew that you know, if you're in a Meijer parking lot and you got some time to kill, what are you going to do? But go in the store, right? So absolutely yeah, that was uh, that was really forward thinking. Can you talk a little bit about MDOT's got a lot of expertise in innovative contracting. It's been, you know, very flexible about trying new things to be more efficient, given the decades-long, you know, shortage of funding and it's really made a lot of people smart about different ways to do things. Is that really benefited, you think, that kind of culture of innovation and administering this?
Steve Minton:Yeah, yeah, another great question. So the, the NEVI formula program. So there's something called the NEVI final rule that came out of the by-person infrastructure law that essentially said, hey, with this funding, not only you know, will you know partially or mostly pay for these charging stations, but the charging stations have to operate at a 97 uptime for five years after they come online. And so how do you contractually ensure that that happens? And so thankfully, we already have, you know, contracting types that work for that and it's called the design, build, operate, maintain, or DBOM as we like to refer to it. So it essentially, you know it's a contracting method where you know the, the entity that we're contracting with it has to do the design. In this case it's pretty simple a site plan for a charging station is really not that complicated, and then they have to construct it. That's the build portion, and then the operate and maintain is for that five-year period and we have milestone payments that you know they will receive each year if they are operating to maintain it per the, the contractual requirements, and there are penalties if they are less than that 97 percent up t ime.
Steve Minton:So really critical point here is that of the existing stations that are out there kind of around the country today it I think I've seen the number at any given time like 20 percent of them aren't operational and that's a real concern that you know if, if you're driving along and have an EV and want to charge, you know. How do you know that if there is a charger, you know in your vicinity that it's actually operational. So it's a really a critical focal point for the program that these chargers, when they're installed and operational, that they are up and running all the time, and so that that's really critical to this program. But again kind of back to the contracting method. Thankfully, you know, we have a method that works well and then we're, you know, familiar with it and used to it, and so we can tailor our contract documents to fit the NEVI program which we did stick around.
Jeff Cranson:There's more to come right after this short message.
Steve Minton:Know before you go, head on over to MiDrive to check out the latest on road construction and possible delays along your route.
Jeff Cranson:Well, I know this isn't in your silo as much, but what you talked about is so important that we've got to know that the infrastructure is reliable, and that's why there's another track going that involves repairing and making sure that the chargers are working right yeah, yeah.
Steve Minton:So there's another grant that Michigan received the charger reliability accelerator and something else. It's CRA I can't remember exactly the what the acronym stands for. Essentially what it does is it gives this MDOT 1.8 million, I believe is what was received to work with, let's say, the owners of the existing stations that aren't operational and to, you know, work with them, you know to have them, you know, to provide funding to get them operational again. So I'm, you know, I'll say fortunately, not fortunately, but handling that part of, let's say, this space. So there was others and Tim Croze in our operations Bureau is working on that program. So it is connected, but a little different than what NEVI is doing.
Jeff Cranson:Yeah. So what do you hear from maybe not just colleagues, but you know friends or family, when they ask you hey, what are you doing these days? You know, how do you, how do you talk, talk about it and you know, break it down, especially for, you know, any EV skeptics you might know.
Steve Minton:Yeah, right, so I think more people are becoming familiar as we do things like this just to kind of get the word out, and you know it's just. I think there's a lot of misunderstanding, like at the, even at the charging level, like, okay, you know, a level 2 charger is not the same as a DC fast charger. They're very different and a level 2 charger can be installed in your garage and it's like it takes the, let's say, the same type of power connection as you would hook up an electric dryer, so like a 240 volt, you can have, you know that installed your garage if you have, you know, kind of the right, I guess, capability for not a lot. I mean, they get about a thousand dollars to get that and you can charge at home and that's actually the most economical way to do it.
Steve Minton:Now you know if you're out and about and you know you weren't able to charge at home for some reason or running low, you know we're trying to fill that gap with these DC fast chargers which you know will charge very fast. You know 20 minutes, you know. You know if you're, you know, close to empty on a normal or, let's say, average EV vehicle, and so you know the idea is hey, you know, if you're out and about, there should be something available for you to charge quickly, and that cause a great deal and convenience you know maybe I'm thinking too much about Seinfeld episodes, but I kind of envisioned situations with the HOA's and various condo associations where some people you know maybe really in the EVs and want the association to provide charging infrastructure and others being like no way are we supporting that?
Jeff Cranson:I'm never driving an EV and why would I do that? I know this is outside of your policy expertise, but do you think that that those kinds of debates are going to continue for a while.
Steve Minton:Yeah, that's a really good point. I was just at an event yesterday down at some kind of the Southeast Michigan Council of governments. Just to you know, I kind of talk about let's say, at a local government level. What are they doing and how do we coordinate with them at a state level? But some of the conversations even dive deeper into, like you know, multi, you know family dwelling, you know how do you, how do you set up chargers or a situation like that, and is that possible? And so you start thinking about those sorts of things.
Steve Minton:And just, you know, getting that availability of, you know whether it's a DC fast charger or level two charger, even a level one charger, you know what, you know what, what options are there? And you know it's not quite the same as going to a gas station and filling up, even though these will exist at gas stations, and so I think that's just a natural, you know, as a solution to where these things can be. But they also can be at your home and they also can be, you know, restaurants and convenience stores or maybe an apartment complex. So, yeah, I think we're just at the beginning of all this, and then the more minds that are looking into it and thinking about it and trying to come up With those solutions. I think the better, and I think we'll see all kinds of things that'll probably come come to fruition here.
Jeff Cranson:We still get a lot of questions, sometimes from lawmakers when they come to Lansing for the first time and obviously on social media, from the general public. The federal highway administration has long not allowed for these kinds of concessions and rest areas and federal aid roads. Have you been involved in any discussions about that changing and whether or not DOTs could provide it at rest areas or rideshare lots?
Steve Minton:Yeah, I, yeah, I don't know a lot. I just I do know there's some issue with being able to, you know, generate revenue or something that are at a rest area. So it's not like we could partner with it, with a private entity, to have something installed or they would be able to actually make money at a rest area. So I'm not part of those conversations directly, I've kind of been on the periphery of them. So I don't, unfortunately, know a lot. But it seems like, just intuitively, that you know there would be some solution to allow us to do something like that, but I don't know when or how that will happen.
Jeff Cranson:Yeah, and I think it confuses people even more when they see the plazas on you know toll roads in Ohio or Indiana or Pennsylvania and we don't have you know a turnpike or toll roads and they're operated under their own authorities and they have a lot more leeway. It's yeah, it's a lot of explaining.
Steve Minton:Yes, yes, for sure. Yeah, because you know right. I mean, it just seems like a you know again, a two intuitive thing. Why can't we? So? Yeah, unfortunately we don't have those quite those same setups. A little bit more effort, maybe, to try to figure that out.
Jeff Cranson:Thank you, Steve, for breaking this down. I'm really looking forward to watching this as it goes forward and, you know, being part of something bigger that is going to. You know it's going to be part of a revolutionary change in how we drive and it's going to be. Ultimately it's going to be a good thing for our carbon footprint, for the environment and mean a lot to our future generations. So is there anything else you want to add to what we talked about?
Steve Minton:No, yeah, yes, those are some really great questions that I think will be helpful for people to understand kind of the program and where we're headed with all this and it is the future. So, you know, it'll probably be a little slower transition than maybe somewhere originally thinking, but it's coming and I think it will be a great benefit, you know, to our environment and everything.
Jeff Cranson:So, yeah, yeah, these things are never a straight line, that's for sure.
Steve Minton:Yeah, for sure, as much as we want them to be. No, well, thank you, Steve.
Jeff Cranson:All right, well, thank you, I'd like to thank you once more for tuning into Talking Michigan Transportation. You can find show notes and more on Apple podcasts or Buzz Sprout. I also want to acknowledge the talents of people who help make this a reality each week, starting with Randy Debler, who skillfully edits the audio, Jesse Ball, who proves the content, Courtney Bates, who posts the podcast of various platforms, and Jacke Salinas, who transcribes the audio to make it accessible to all.