What is Design/Build?

By Edmund S. Tijerina

Milwaukee's Midwest Express Center is one of Wisconsin's most prominent design/build projects. Photo: Jayne Laste

Broadly, "design/build" refers to concentrating the design and construction of a project in a single entity. Easier said than done.

Reason is, the major unresolved dispute remains: Who leads the design/build team, the architects and engineers or the contractors?

Says John C. Hunzinger, president of Brookfield-based Hunzinger Construction Co.: "Contractors are typically not risk-averse. They are usually good at managing people, managing companies and managing risk. Good builders are very good at it."

Paul Doherty, an architect from Tennessee, writes to his fellow architects when he says, "The professsion's challenge is not how do we stop the design/build trend, but how we can benefit the most (or be injured the least) by the inevitability of this trend ... It is the profession's challenge to ensure that the design is kept as the lead in design/build, rather than as build/design."

The design/build team could be headed by a contractor or architect, it could be a single firm performing all functions of the team, a special corporate entity created just for a specific project, or a collaboration of different firms in a design/build team.

No matter the structure, the result is the same - an expression of dissatisfaction over the current method: A client hires an architect to design the project, bids out the various jobs that make up the project, and then assembles the team of low bidders to perform the work.

"You can try to employ partnering processes, but you've already laid the groundwork for an adversarial relationship," said Hunzinger of Hunzinger Construction, which has completed several big design/build jobs, including Milwaukee's Midwest Express Center.

Instead, the client contracts with a design/build team and works with a single representative to get the job done. The practice is growing because it eliminates the hassle factor, design/build contractors ay.
Under traditional methods "you have somebody designing a design and throwing it over the wall to get it built. I think it's bass-ackwards," Hunzinger said. "A buyer who's an expert at making widgets just wants a building where they can make widgets. Why can't they get their building?"

The result: Design/build is the fastest-growing method of delivery, currently accounting for about 25 percent of all nonresidential construction, and is expected to hit 50 percent by 2003.

A perfect fit

Design/build practitioners point to their ability to achieve a custom fit with their clients' needs.
"If you're doing design/build, you have one solution to a problem," said Les Blum, senior vice president of Opus North Corp., the state's largest design/build contractor. "With design/build, you get four or five different solutions to the problem. It's like a heating system. If you say, 'Heat my building,' you'll get different proposals on the best way to heat your building. If you have your plan and specs, you say, 'Use this system to heat my building,' and you might not know if it's the best way to do it."

Ideally, the design/build team members coordinate their work by tapping into each others' expertise. The team could have a structure of independent companies signing cooperative contracts with a client or could create a new company altogether, such as the Cream City Association, the 26-firm limited liability company that is the entity that built the convention center.

Big Bend-based Peter Schwabe Inc. refers to it as "joining the right expertise for each project, in sharing the vision, analysis and options with all members of the project from day one with the owner."

The right combination

A firm such as Peter Schwabe or Rosemont, Ill.-based Opus North has staff architects and the ability to manage an entire project under one roof. But that's not the only option.

Portions of Milwaukee's Miller Park are considered design/build. Photo: Jayne Laste

"If a job requires outside expertise, we will partner with it," Blum said.

Randy Scoville, chief operating officer of Peter Schwabe, says "the approach and the organization of the team is what differs from one project team to another."

For an owner, this means more work up front in clearly defining a project, Blum said.

Contractors throw thousands of dollars and far more hours at their design/build proposals than their traditional bids, Blum said. Since design/build proposals aren't based on specific specs, but on finding a solution to a broad problem, projects' suitors spend a great deal of money on finding just the right solution.

The key advantages of design/build come primarily from this improved communication, speed, efficiency and, some say, cost. When architects, contractors and subcontractors are talking, they are more likely to stay on schedule, anticipate problems, and quickly find solutions to these potential problems, builders say.

Checks and balances

Besides the significant upfront costs associated with developing the perfect proposal, would-be design/build contractors complain that the process shuts out new competitors and undermines the traditional checks and balances between builders and architects.

"Smaller contractors are concerned about whether they will even be invited to bid at all," said Don Croysdale, executive director of the American Subcontractors Association of Greater Milwaukee. "A design/build team may not accept bids from just anybody. If you're not on the short list, you could be shut out."

Scott McBrien, marketing director of Camosy Inc., a Racine-based general contractor, doesn't see competition being limited.

"Even though we're doing design/build, we still get prices from subcontractors," he said. "The owner gets the best of both worlds - a design/build team and also the best price from subs."

As for the checks and balances between contractors and designers, both of whom are now wrestling nationally for control of the design/build process, that's what led to the popularity of design/build in the first place.

"We are an industry that has really done this to itself," Hunzinger said. "The industry has failed to do what clients want. After many bad experiences, much litigation, too many change orders, much finger pointing, buyers are demanding something else."