For years now, design-build focused organizations and projects have been trending up, with no signs that the momentum is slowing down. Last year, FMI Consulting even forecast that design-build projects will represent 47% of construction spending and 22.5% growth in total design-build spending by 2026. Of course, with such staggering numbers comes an increase in building owners competing to showcase their success in executing design build projects.
Design-build has always been a way for construction teams to work more efficiently, lower costs, and work faster than the design-bid-build model allows for. With the old, linear design-bid-build model, owners had to complete design, then go through a long bidding process before any construction could get underway. With design-build, though, there is a shared approach that enables every aspect of a project to come together at once, driving new cost and time-saving efficiencies.
In the traditional design-bid-build model, engineers design independently of how a project is going to be built. Often this is done without considering the construction complexity and cost. However, by completing design during construction, with constant collaboration between the owner, engineers, and builders, recommendations can be made that may save time and money.
As design-build projects continue to grow more popular, teams are finding ways to incorporate new technologies, such as virtual reality and artificial intelligence (AI), to make their design-build projects more usable and lower cost than previously possible. For instance, AI can help those teams save even more time and money by optimizing scheduling and tracking potential supply-chain bottlenecks. Using immersive virtual reality, extended project teams can perform reviews from within the model to better understand the usability of the design once the project is complete.
Ultimately, to win business in the booming design-build ecosystem, contractors must assure building owners they have the experience necessary to manage these specialized projects, as well as the modern tools needed to optimize the extended enterprise. To do this, teams need to demonstrate they have three components that enable a successful design-build project management strategy—collaboration, transparency, and security/access control.
1. Collaboration Begins with Access
With construction beginning before design is complete, design-build strategies emphasize the need for all organizations on a project to truly embrace collaboration. Imagine a project lifecycle where every decision is informed by real-time data, risks are predicted before they arise, and efficiency is maximized. Today’s unique data model allows all owners to leverage their data. This approach assures all participants that other project organizations―even the one providing the system―cannot change their data or limit access to it.
Document sharing, scheduling, risk management, and other critical functionality must be built in to ensure everyone has the information they need, whenever they need it. As is the case with all collaboration-driven projects, cloud storage solutions and data visualization tools will play a critical role in enabling the real-time sharing of actionable data across design-build projects.
2. Transparency Keeps All Responsible Parties Informed
The project management tools must always provide all responsible parties with a clear understanding of issues and decisions potentially impacting them to ensure there are no expensive delays or unacceptable surprises. This includes owners, GCs, and subcontractors. Reporting frameworks and frequency, agreed-upon employer information requirements (EIRs), and project standardization and governance are all indispensable tools that provide clear, unalterable audit trails on the information status of project-related decisions and tasks. This improved transparency between the build team and the owner ensures that everyone has a better understanding of all issues before they develop into project-altering problems.
3. Security and Access Control Builds Trust
It’s critical that all information on a project is captured in a single platform, and where all stakeholders have control over their data, and no stakeholder has an advantage over another. This is often called Neutrality. Neutrality helps to build trust among all project participants and leads to greater adoption, providing even more data and insights. Project information must be housed in a secure environment and protected from threats through rigorous security protocols to ensure that all stakeholders know their data is safeguarded.
For example, designers typically do not want to share changes with builders until they know the design is final, ensuring complete quality control over the information being shared. These project management tools should allow for control over who can access what data within a system, building confidence and trust across organizations while removing friction. The same is true for other transactions such as the request for information (RFI) process—stakeholders must feel confident that only specific involved parties have access to the data directly involved in the project.
While all these steps are essential, perhaps the greatest challenge to a design-build project is getting building owners and other project stakeholders on board. To do that, it is the responsibility of the design-build team to illustrate that their design-build strategy has a proven track record across the entire project lifecycle, such as measuring and projecting progress through regular reporting and benchmark-setting tools. Only then will building owners and contractors have the confidence they need to move forward with their own design-build initiatives.
