The construction industry faces a significant challenge: achieving ambitious sustainability goals while delivering projects on time and within budget. Traditional, siloed project delivery methods often struggle to address these goals effectively.
Collaborative Delivery
Transparent Collaboration Maximizes Value on Big Projects
Collaboration, innovation, and inclusion are key to the success of big design-build projects. Implementing such measures in the early phases of a project helps ensure overall project success and should be a guiding principle on all large design-build projects.
Balancing Self-Performance and Subcontracting in Collaborative Delivery Projects
As the number and size of infrastructure projects continue to increase, while the qualified available workforce continues to decrease, contractors who traditionally identify as “self-performing” contractors find themselves having to make decisions on what scopes of work they ultimately need to self-perform for project success. This is especially true on the “mega-sized” projects.
Do You Really Want to Contract with the Greater Fool?
One of my typical roles as an owner advisor is to review proposed construction management at-risk (CMAR) and design-build contracts from a commercial perspective—i.e., what’s the likely marketplace reaction to the contract and is the contract consistent with the philosophy behind collaborative delivery? I am continually amazed by what I see.
Mitigating Market Volatility During Construction Through Collaborative Delivery Methods
Across the board, supply chain issues and rising costs are impacting engineering and construction projects. The costs of construction materials have elevated over the past year due to growing demand and major disruptions to production fueled by the pandemic. These disruptions are responsible for construction material shortages much like the auto industry is facing with microchip shortages.
Addressing Critical Water Infrastructure Needs in Uncertain Times
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the continued development of critical infrastructure, creating growing uncertainty concerning financing opportunities and project delivery.
Why Should Water Collaborative Delivery Projects Have an Integrated Design Manager?
The idea of an integrated design management role for collaborative delivery projects is not a new one. For over 20 years, vertical commercial collaborative delivery projects have assigned an integrated design manager to drive seamless collaboration for overall project success. However, when describing this position in the water industry, the immediate response is, “What is an integrated design manager?”
Supply Chain Engagement
Water/wastewater projects are becoming larger and more complex. Our industry is continuously innovating to maximize the productivity of existing and new plants. Recent events related to the COVID-19 outbreak may have permanent changes in the way plants are designed and built. The design and procurement process for collaborative delivery projects requires early involvement of supply chain partners to reduce risks for a successful proposal and construction.
Timing Can Be A “Risky Business”
The discussion on risk allocation and project contingency versus design-builder contingency has been well documented in several previous blogs. The WDBC Water and Wastewater Design-Build Handbook also provides excellent guidance on best practices for risk allocation. However, my recent experiences on current projects have led me to believe that, far too often, a project’s price, contingency, and schedule are adversely impacted by not addressing project risks with the right team members at the right time, and this topic is worthy of further discussion.
Closing the Gap with Design-Build for Water Infrastructure
Today’s global infrastructure investment, estimated to be $2.5 trillion per year, falls short of the $3.3 trillion annual investment needed to keep pace with expected growth, not to mention renewal of existing aging infrastructure.