For most U.S. states, acceptance of the design/build approach to construction projects represents a very recent shift in attitude. The architects who covet a spot on the design/build teams should empathize. While their industry has changed its attitude in recent years, historical opposition to design/build was one of the primary reasons their major trade organization was established in the first place.
In design/build, clients hire an entire project team including a general contractor, a designer and purveyors of the various other tasks required to complete the project. Most often, the construction firm works directly for the client, with the other parties reporting to it. In some cases, the entire team is hired on a joint-venture basis, and in a growing but still relatively rare number of cases, the architect leads the team.
The concept was controversial for many years because of the fear that certain parties not hired directly by the client, particularly designers, would put the profit of the contractor ahead of concern for the client.
In 1994, the federal government dramatically changed the dynamics of the issue by adopting the Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act, which permitted federal agencies hire design/build teams as an alternative to putting out individual bids for every particular aspect of a construction job.
As design/build work on federal projects began to increase, states’ historical suspicion of the practice began to break down—leading to a gusher of new state laws permitting the use of design/build on public sector projects.
Contractors who work extensively with design/build arrangements say the factor arguing for a design/build project is a client’s accelerated timetable.
Chris Bingaman, business development director for Louisville-based Whittenberg Construction—which does concrete work in about 40 percent of its contracts—says the firm goes the design/build route less than 5 percent of the time.
“Accelerated schedules are the reason you do it,” Bingaman says. “The thing that drives design/build is the heavy workload everyone has, and the rising costs of concrete, steel and other supplies.”
Joe Sanders, senior vice president for Pasadena-based Charles Pankow Builders Ltd., says growing interest in design/build is a simple matter of clients wanting better results.
“The traditional system was not producing the results that any of the parties would like to see produced as a result of a contracting arrangement,” Sanders says. “And parties are, from our perspective, becoming much more receptive to the design/build method, which incorporates the relationship or collaborative aspects that seem to be in vogue these days.”
Sanders believes design/build is a particularly good fit for concrete work because of the greater flexibility and creativity that is possible when a designer takes on a concrete job.
“The traditional builder has, over the years, outsourced the concrete work associated with a project,” Sanders says. “That’s what enables you to be called a builder as opposed to just a general contractor. Concrete structural systems lend themselves very well to that, whereas the structural steel systems lend themselves to subcontracting, where you’re not really a builder. In order to be able to do things under a design/build system, you need to be able to control costs.”
Since 2001, more than 300 state laws have been passed allowing for increased use of design/build by public-sector entities. Today, only Alabama, Michigan and Rhode Island are without laws authorizing design/build.
According to Bill Quatman, who chairs the Design/Build Advisory Group of the American Institute of Architects, the state laws have passed in such large numbers because they being driven by public sector officials, rather than by trade groups.
“It’s being pushed by school districts, counties, facility managers, university officials, departments of transportation,” Quatman says. “The public agencies want to be able to use design/build, and they’re going to legislatures to get authority, and getting it by phenomenal percentages.”
Sanders agreed that public entities represent a significant portion of those expressing interest in design/build.
“We’ve diversified into more types of building projects and more types of clients,” Sanders says. “We’re constantly pursuing schools and other public-type projects—libraries, police stations and city halls—as well as retail and office, just expanding the number of clients we can service through design/build. Quite a few of those entities are aware that they’re not getting what they thought they were getting through the traditional system, as the ability of architects to deliver high-quality documents continues to erode. These entities are looking for ways to layer these people under the builder, to get a more significant level of guarantee.”
State laws explicitly permitting design/build were not driven by a need to repeal any statutory provisions—design/build was never explicitly prohibited—but rather to clarify the issue in light of many court challenges that made it virtually impossible for public entities to engage in any practice other than the traditional let-to-the-highest-bidder approach.
“The courts have split right down the middle,” Quatman says. “Some have says it’s within the procurement agency’s discretion to use different delivery methods. Some have says no, you can’t.”
Quatman’s advocacy of design/build is emblematic of AIA’s evolution on the issue. One of the principles driving the group’s founding in 1857 was the belief that participation in design/build work was fundamentally unethical for architects. In 1909, the group passed a code of ethics expressly forbidding its members from taking part in design/build teams. The restriction was not lifted until 1978.
“As design/build began to tick upward again, after falling off for 100 years, they appealed the rule, and boy, the door’s been blasting wide open since then,” Quatman says. “Architects have gotten on the design/build bandwagon in a big way.”
Today, AIA not only advocates for laws to allow design/build in public projects, it has even developed a contract template to guide its members who want to work within design/build teams.
But while AIA and other design/build advocacy groups have seen progress on the legislative front, one AIA priority that has seen little success is that of having architects serve as the leaders of the design/build teams.
Sanders says architects typically work for Charles Pankow Builders when Pankow undertakes a design/build project.
“We have not done a designer-led design/build,” Sanders says. “We work with a variety of architects, and when we’re working together as professionals, if we respect their talents it makes for a very good working relationship.”
Bingaman says Whittenberg takes a more collaborative, but definitely not architect-led, approach.
“It’s more of a partnership,” Bingaman says. “We would form a team and go from there. A lot of the time clients just hire us direct to do it as construction management, and it turns out to be design/build.”
Lee Evey, CEO of the Design/Build Institute of America, says only 15 percent of design/build projects are led by architects—with 56 percent being led by construction firms and the rest consisting of joint-venture arrangements.
But Evey, who travels the country advocating for design/build, disputes the notion that contractors run the show in design/build projects—a notion he believes drives much of the lingering suspicion about design/build.
“Design/build is not design/bid/build with a twist,” Evey says. “It’s all about cooperation, communication and teamwork, and it makes fundamental changes to the way we go about doing the cautions, writing the contracts and establishing the environment in which teams come together to perform work.” DBIA offers training to contractors, architects, clients and others on the different approaches involved in design/build. A key element involves teaching the parties to get away from awarding contracts to low bidders, and to change their thinking in terms of how they communicate standards.
“We teach owners how to communicate standards in a fundamentally different way,” Evey says. “Instead of giving you thousands of pages of standards, we teach them to say, ‘These are my goals, my challenges and my problems. These are my constraints and this is my budget.’ The competition is who has the most creativity within the team to meet these requirements.”
DBIA trains clients to spell out their requirements in two pages, then to challenge prospective design/build teams to develop the best plan to meet the requirements.
Evey says he has received growing inquiries from the concrete construction industry, particularly in the tilt-up sector, and recently gave a presentation at the invitation of the Tilt-Up Concrete Association.
In the meantime, Evey is trying to complete the design/build map by pushing for legislation in the three remaining holdout states, and by continuing to get parties of all varieties familiar and comfortable with the design/build process. One of his most compelling arguments comes from his own most high-profile assignment—leading the design/build team on the reconstruction of the Pentagon after 9/11.
“The first standards were 5,000 pages long,” Evey says.. “When I built wedges two through five, I did that design/build. My design specs were 16 pages, and I would submit to you that, for owners who are doing huge volumes of designs and pictures, go to a different environment, where the owners say, ‘Here are my needs—you tell me how you would meet my needs best.’”