Give Me Liberty, or Give Me Death?

Patrick Henry, 1736-1799

It's seems somewhat just that the defender of liberty spoke his famous words before citizens considering a new convention for government. To borrow from Patrick Henry's inspiration, consider these questions in the context of "conventional" project delivery strategies:

What if you could name the bid-price for your next project? What if you could be certain that the price you name satisfies all of your project needs? What if the project you purchased, at the price you named, exceeded all of your expectations? What if all this could be done within a marketplace ready to respond?

What if you could do the same when it comes to project delivery and the acquisition of your next project?  This is exactly what the City of Liberty Missouri is doing for their new $65 million wastewater treatment facility and collection/conveyance system improvements. That's right, Liberty!

With a Request for Proposal (RFP) using CSI Uniformat structured "performance" design-build criteria, combined with a fixed-price best-value acquisition strategy, Liberty will be the first public owner to leverage "Outcome-Based" contracting to secure their new 5MGD wastewater treatment facility using Design-Build Delivery.

What does "Outcome-Based" mean? The City and design-builder will work under a contract that establishes performance levels for effluent quality, service life, durability, ease of operation and maintenance, and satisfaction of regulations (such as code and Missouri Department of Natural Resources) rather than a prescriptive design that was put out for low-bid with no post-construction assurance of effluent quality results.

To establish a contract for such measurable performance, certain conventional processes must be amended or abandoned all together. First, the design-builder assumes all control of design and construction decision-making. Liberty, in exchange for relinquishing design and construction decision-making control, has established substantiation protocols as the burden-of-proof, to be addressed by the design-builder to demonstrate compliance with all performance criteria.

Since the contract price is set (target), the owner has prioritized the "required", "desired", and "if-possible" scopes-of-work, thereby allowing the competing design-build teams to apply innovation and management efficiency in establishing their solutions. This prioritized list is known as the "3PQ" (preferred price priority queue), and is used as a checklist to measure maximum value.

If this process sounds familiar, it is: DOE/NREL used 3PQ on their award winning RSF Project in Golden Colorado, the Arkansas Air National Guard used 3PQ on the first LEED Gold certified Guard facility, and Kansas State University used the 3PQ acquisition strategy on their new Olathe Campus, just to name a few.

A RFP with clearly defined and prioritized scopes-of-work allow the competing teams to drill down, maximizing the value for the City, via total control over the design, means, and methods of construction...again, performance "outcome" is the basis of the contract (not traditional design drawings), and maximizing the 3PQ is a clear indicator of value.

In addition to this unique 3PQ Acquisition Process, Liberty is following DBIA Best Practices relative to the project owner, and encouraging adherence to all DBIA Best Practices by competing teams. This include stipends (design honorarium) paid to the shortlisted teams, aspirational contract incentives, and Proposal Phase "one-on-one" meetings.

The project will also be featured in a concurrent session at the 2014 DBIA National Conference, in Dallas Texas on October 7th. The session will explain how Liberty came to use design-build and how the owner leveraged DBIA Best Practices in the acquisition planning.

The $65 million acquisition/project is anticipated to come online around the end of 2016. For more information on the project, readers can contact the David Shelton at this blog site or Brian Hess, Utilities Director for the city of Liberty Missouri (bless@ci.liberty.mo.us.  Additional details of the strategies leveraged by the 3PQ Acquisition Process can also be found at this blog (highperformanceoutcomes@blogspot.com).