Team D/B

I'm a graduate of Northwestern University, home of the Wildcats, once known as the worst football team in the Big Ten.

N.U. grads took a certain pride in the losing streak. You see, it isn't enough to run faster, throw with greater accuracy or thread your way through a defensive line at Northwestern. Nope, you've gotta have more than game, you've gotta have grades. You need SAT scores and a GPA that rival your total yardage. So those of us who truly are Wildcats fans were conflicted a few years ago as we sent not just our best, but our brightest, to the Rose Bowl.

We'd taken a certain perverse pride in freezing in an empty Dykes Stadium after yet another interception chanting "Ho-Ho! Hey-Hey! We're gonna own you anyway!" Tossing marshmallows on the field was just our way of feigning disgust with a Wildcats offense that ducked, covered their heads and protected their hands. After all, they were future surgeons and concert pianists.

I don't just recount this tale because it's getting close to homecoming. As the possibility of state-sanctioned limited bidding for public projects moves closer to reality, I get the sense that even the industry that has lobbied for it and the government that sees the value in it are conflicted over whether the victory really would be all that sweet.

More than a year ago, Gov. Thompson had his pen poised, ready to sign a budget-bill measure that would have allowed local governments to use design/build on public construction. Groups like the Associated General Contractors of Greater Milwaukee were prematurely celebrating a win: "We helped write that bill," a victorious AGC Executive Vice President Mike Fabishak told me.

Then Team D/B took a look at the opposition and saw some pretty big guys. Even as cheerleaders from the Milwaukee Metropolitan Sewerage District jumped and chanted, pressing the bill toward the governor's desk, Thompson sized up the competition and saw unresolved details related to how contracts would be written and jobs would be carried out. Nag-ging doubt about public perception dogged the team.

Thompson called an audible. He stamped a veto on the measure.

Now in this new season, Thompson has asked State Building Commission Secretary Bob Brandherm to rally a team that is significantly less sure of design/build's potential to go all the way. Industry executives, through their associations, are looking at all the contract language and other details that need ironing out, the ways in which local contractors could lose or gain a competitive edge and that ever-present public-perception dilemma.

Groups including the Associated General Contractors, the open-shop Associated Builders and Contractors, the Wisconsin Association of Consulting Engineers, the American Institute of Architects, the Wisconsin Underground Contractors Associa-tion and many others are estimating what they and their constituents have to win or lose from encouraging local governments to go design/build and take limited bids.

Local governments and state legislators are weighing the potential benefits in time and cost savings with the risks of putting a single entity in charge.

Take my word for it that some on Team D/B are deciding they came to play - just as others are thinking that given what design/build would mean to their businesses, they can't win for losing.

-Liz Oplatka