Formerly Water Design-Build Council
The booming water/wastewater market is keeping design-builders busy, so much so that the economic equilibrium is off-center, slanted toward a place where demand often exceeds supply. It’s a design-builders’ (bidders) market.
The design-build project delivery approach continues to deliver value to municipal water utilities. From a single point of responsibility and integration to cost certainty and timely delivery, design-build can help create a more streamlined and seamless project experience.
Pursuing, winning, and successfully executing design-build projects requires having the right team in place for the project. The “right” team has the experience and diversity to foster creativity and increase the quality of solutions for the owner while identifying and addressing the unique challenges associated with the project.
The major tenet of design-build is collaboration. Our clients require a solution to their project that is built by a group of highly qualified and experienced design and construction professionals. The collaboration required to meet that demand is not simply between the design-build team and the owner, but also between each of the professionals within the design-build team.
Design-build has become the fastest-growing delivery method in the water/wastewater industry across the nation. Cost certainty and accelerated schedules have encouraged most states to embrace the design-build model. In the current market, large-scale design-build projects receive most of the headlines, but design-build can be a perfect fit for your small-scale projects.
I have always been perplexed as to why dispute boards are so rarely used on water/wastewater projects. They enjoy a long history of successful use on transportation projects—particularly tunneling projects and big-dollar design-build projects. Most transportation owners find dispute boards helpful, and it is clear that they provide the parties with a vehicle to get real-time resolution of project challenges. But it seems that water/wastewater owners and owner advisors don’t even give a thought (let alone a second thought) to considering the use of a dispute board when they put together their contracting approach for a non-tunneling project.
Compared to the traditional design-bid-build method, design-build delivery can accelerate design and construction schedules by 20% to 30%. Many cities and counties have implemented new fast-tracked permitting review processes to reduce the turnaround time for issuing permits, which are critical to maintaining the construction schedule.
The design-build delivery method demands people from various backgrounds, companies, and professional expertise work together to deliver a successful project that benefits the entire team—owners, contractors, and engineers alike. Leadership from all members of the team makes the difference in delivering great results; however, how does such a varied team ensure that each member contributes elite leadership? How does each member of the team be the best version of themselves and contribute the most?
A standard design-build-operate (DBO) partnership in the water and wastewater market may include an operations company, a lead design engineering firm, and a contractor to complete the construction phase. Depending on the contractual arrangement, each organization is typically contractually bound to one another through the completion of the construction elements of the project, and in some cases this relationship extends into the steady-state, long-term operations and maintenance period. Given the complexity of these projects, the question arises: How does each company succeed in a DBO partnership?
Design-build contracts continue to mature and evolve in many aspects, including terms related to liability. In the world of water infrastructure delivery, design-build most often pairs a contractor and a design firm.