Accelerate Contracting Efforts for New Infrastructure Funding

With the recent passage of the $1 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, many Departments of Transportation (DOTs), utilities, port authorities, and other critical infrastructure agencies are now poised to receive a significant amount of funding that will transform their missions.

For agencies that anticipate a significant increase in new projects as a result of the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, it’s a good time to take steps to streamline and digitize processes that may be impacted by this increase in project activity, including procurement, grant management, permitting, HR and more.

Digital technologies that can help accelerate implementation of infrastructure funds

Contract lifecycle management 

Docusign CLM offers the ability to customize approval routing and incorporate automation, giving procurement teams opportunities to reduce manual errors and speed up inefficient processes. A single, centralized, searchable contract repository gives procurement teams complete access to all contracts, and increased confidence to find and act on critical contract terms and manage subcontractors. Leveraging  a single platform for all parts of the contract lifecycle can reduce friction in workflows.

Managing grant applications 

Announced in April 2021, the Department of Transportation is offering $1 billion in RAISE grants for modernizing our nation’s infrastructure – and this will likely increase with the new legislation. 

Docusign eSignature helps automate grant workflows and reduces errors by guiding signers to complete the necessary fields. 

Hiring and onboarding contractors

Many DOTs and utilities will need to initiate rapid hiring and onboarding of both employees and contractors. eSignature is a fast, easy and secure way to hire workers remotely by sending offer letters using prebuilt employee templates. New employees can sign onboarding paperwork quickly with eSignature and companies can use Docusign ID Verification to create a digital experience to complete additional paperwork. HR teams can utilize Docusign’s prebuilt templates to remotely manage W-4, I-9 and other important forms and bulk send functionality to send and track employee policy documents.

Licensing and Permitting 

Infrastructure projects often need to go through complicated land use and environmental permitting. Regulatory agencies that issue permits may feel downstream effects from this new law in the form of greater caseloads. Streamlining the permitting process is critical for ramping up infrastructure-related efforts. Docusign can help permitting and licensing offices to transform their agreement processes to save time, cut costs, and reduce risks for quickly bringing new projects to life.

Digital contracting success stories  

A wide range of DOTs and other agencies have already streamlined their processes for contracting efforts, document compliance, and more. Here are some examples:

• A Southern State Department of Transportation integrated Docusign eSignature into its SharePoint environment to improve engineering document signoff compliance. As a result, the agency achieved 100% compliance with all sign-off requirements, and significantly accelerated the overall document signing process.

• A Western State Department of Transportation currently uses Docusign eSignature to streamline all of its construction contracts. As a result, the agency was able to reduce contracting time by 90%, while also making processes more user-friendly and increasing transparency and efficiency. It also saw a 92% time reduction for its Disadvantaged Business Enterprise (DBE) procurement process.

• California Natural Resources Agency (CNRA) needed to modernize its manual, inefficient processes to simplify the sending and tracking of documents and create better interoperability between departments. By using Docusign eSignature, contract approval time is now less than one minute, and the agency achieved a 75% reduction in hard paper costs. Learn more in this case study.

Let’s get your department ready to make history. Learn more about how the Docusign Agreement Cloud for Government can help your agency accelerate your contract process to take advantage of new infrastructure funding.