In the Drew County case, a public hospital authority in Arkansas incurred more than $100,000 in design fees from the design-builder before realizing its design-build contract was prohibited by Arkansas competitive bidding statutes.  Id. at 5-6.  The hospital refused to pay the design-builder, arguing that it was neither a licensed contractor nor a licensed design professional.  Id.  The court concluded the design-builder did [...]

The Supreme Court of Pennsylvania recently rejected the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation’s Innovative Bidding Tool-kit, including its best-value design-build process for failing to comply with competitive bidding laws.   Nearly four years ago, and not long after the I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis, PennDOT determined it needed to rebuild two stretches of bridges along I-90 in Erie [...]

Earlier this month, the Congressional Budget Office published a study entitled Using Public Private Partnerships to Carry Out Highway Projects.  http://www.cbo.gov/doc.cfm?index=12647  The study addresses two issues:  1) can design-build and PPP models provide additional funding for highway projects? and 2) does design-build provide a faster and more cost effective model for delivering highway projects?  See Preface.    A post [...]

The Water Design-Build Council (www.waterdesignbuild.org) has released the Second Edition of its Municipal Water & Wastewater Design-Build Handbook.  The Handbook is an educational tool for owners.  It discusses basic concepts and best practices for executing design-build and construction management (at-risk) projects on public water and waste-water projects.  From defining design-build through managing the design-build contract, the Handbook offers a thorough discussion of design-build project delivery.   The [...]

Many of you know that the American Institute of Architects (AIA) published what it calls Integrated Project Delivery research papers and model contracts (see link at the right of this page).  There is some ambiguity in AIA’s conclusions for the ideal delivery method for executing IPD projects.  AIA’s research focuses on delivering integrates services (without [...]