Experiences of Federal Agencies with the Design-Build Approach to Construction (1993)

The information collected by the committee shows clearly that the design-build approach has been used successfully by a number of federal agencies for a wide variety of projects of varying complexity located in many different regions of the United States.

The responses to the committee's survey indicate that most agencies have had good results with the design-build approach; in most respects the results have been at least as good as with the traditional approach, and in many respects the results have been significantly better. The experiences of the agencies with the design-build approach have been particularly favorable with regard to the amount of time required to carryout a project; however, the design-build approach also got generally good marks on the key factors of costs and user satisfaction.

It should be emphasized that the committee's survey was not comprehensive enough to justify an unqualified endorsement of the design-build approach. Furthermore, the results suggest that the approach might not be as suitable for very large projects (e.g., over $100 million) as for smaller projects.

The time and resources available to the committee did not permit as thorough an analysis as the committee would have liked. For example, if time had permitted the committee would have conducted follow-up interviews with respondents to clarify ambiguous answers. Also, there are still a number of questions about the use of the design-build approach that the committee's investigation did not resolve. For these reasons the committee hopes that the Federal Construction Council or some other body undertakes further studies of the concept. Among the issues that the committee believes deserve more study are the following:

• Why some agencies have gotten much better results with design-build projects than others.

• How much design work should be performed before a request for proposals is issued and a design-build contractor is selected.⁹

• What qualifications should agencies look for in design-build contractors.