Formerly Water Design-Build Council
A critical element of success for progressive design-build projects is cost savings. It is the design-builder’s job to make every penny of the guaranteed maximum price (GMP) count.
With an ever-growing list of urgent water and wastewater infrastructure projects, the industry’s demand for expedited project delivery has increased, and project procurement is often overlooked as a way to get your job started—and finished— faster. Early collaboration enables “quick start” procurement that contributes to achieving an owner’s schedule and cost commitment, with both the owner and design-builder reaping benefits.
Using collaborative delivery for water projects addresses the growing demand in the United States for sustainable and efficient water infrastructure.
How do you keep complex projects on track and successfully moving forward? Collaborative project delivery (CPD) combined with the use of an owner advisor (OA) or program manager.
Projects delivered under construction management at-risk (CMAR) and progressive design-build (PDB) contracts are becoming more common in the US water sector. Each method offers opportunities for an owner to accelerate schedule, collaborate more effectively with a project team, facilitate early consideration of construction issues, and receive insight into project cost. There are many similarities between these two delivery methods, but PDB offers one major differentiator: an opportunity for the owner to transfer additional risk.
As design-build (DB) becomes more common for the development and construction of long-term infrastructure, the engagement of the owner’s operations and maintenance (O&M) team becomes significantly more important to project success. For some projects, the traditional design-bid-build process may not have taken advantage of the institutional knowledge available from the owner’s O&M teams as facilities and systems were designed, constructed, and commissioned.
A vibrant, diverse business community contributes to a region’s innovation and economic performance. Infrastructure projects offer opportunities for diverse businesses to endure long after the completion of a project. Actively seeking out and partnering with qualified small, minority- and women-owned businesses helps fuel sustainable economic growth, resulting in successful project delivery and stronger, more prosperous communities.
As water/wastewater projects continue to increase in complexity, collaborative delivery methods for project execution are becoming increasingly favored among clients. As this shift gains momentum, clients need to be able to trust that their design-build contractor will help them realize the benefits of the collaborative delivery approach throughout the life of the project. The list below outlines several key qualities a water/wastewater client should expect from their design-build contractor.
Most major construction projects in the water and wastewater industry have conventionally been delivered through a design-bid-build (DBB) method of delivery. However, collaborative project delivery (CPD) methods are being considered more frequently in the public sector because they can provide a variety of benefits over traditional delivery methods such as time and/or cost savings. It is important to recognize that these benefits sometimes come with trade-offs, such as reduced control or change in risk, so the pros and cons of each CPD method need to be weighed.
The construction management at-risk (CMAR) delivery model requires contractors, engineers, and owners to think differently about how, why, and when change orders are executed. For the sake of this topic, we will assume that the owner has a separate and autonomous contract with the contractor and the engineer and the project is a guaranteed maximum price (GMP) arrangement for a collaborative delivery.