Single Point of Responsibility
Our design-build contracts combine design and construction into a single point of responsibility, avoiding potential adversarial relationships that could arise under traditional, design-bid-build contracts.
Improved Project Quality
The architects’ and contractor’s cross coordination on the project allows the owner to focus on general decision making in the project’s scope as a whole. This leads to a higher quality project that better suits the owner's needs.Earlier Knowledge of Guaranteed Costs
The contractor establishes a guaranteed cost early on in the design phase, allowing the owner to make changes, request additional value engineering, or add scope to a project before completion of the design.Cost Savings
Value engineering and construct-ability review are enhanced and utilized continuously throughout the project duration. An early involvement of the design-build team is essential in maximizing the full potential of the design-build delivery system. Decisions that can be made during the programming, concept and design phases will impact the schedule and costs of the project more than any other phase of construction.Time Savings
With our design-build projects, design and construction for a project easily overlap, allowing for fast track construction. The owner benefits from this shortened time frame.Improved Risk Management
Because the design-build team resumes full responsibility of developing drawings and specifications along with constructing a fully-functioning facility, change orders for errors and omissions are virtually eliminated. Each stakeholder on the design-build team is responsible for the risks that they are best positioned to manage.Advantages
- Master contract is between the owner and contractor
- Contractor is the single point of responsibility
- Owner has a single point of contact for both design and construction
- Design-Build has been proven to be much quicker than Design-Bid-Build
- Long lead items can be identified and ordered prior to the start of construction
- Value engineering and construct-ability reviews are enhanced due to the integration of the design and construction process
- Changes, disputes, claims and other delays occur less frequently
- The contractor is responsible for the completion of construction documents
- Inconsistencies or scope gaps are the responsibility of the contractor
Considerations
- 3-4 month team selection process prior to beginning design
- The selection of an experienced Design-Build team is essential
- An early understanding of the owner's scope requirement must be reached
- The design is controlled by the predetermined budget
- Alignment of program to proforma is difficult
- Alignment of functional space program to end-user needs is difficult