High Performance Outcomes

What's on the last sheet in a set of plans? A: electrical drawings. What's on the third or fourth sheet? A: Site Plan, maybe the landscape plan. How about opening up the set of plans to the center...wall sections and details? If one provides Division 6 services, they are a carpenter. If they provide Division 9, they install 'sheet rock' or lay-in ceilings. The point is that the traditional set of A&E Plans and Specifications have become such a convention that everyone in the Design & Construction Industry knows the answers to these questions, almost without hesitation. Conventions are a wonderful thing. They improve communication since everyone knows where to look. They save time due to their predictable nature. They allow designers and builders to form a basis of understanding as to the prescriptive scope of a project, even if the designer and builder have never met. At their core, conventional "Plans & Specs" are the glue that holds the commu...

Design-Build is like "getting married" I can't remember who said this quote, but I think it applies to many projects. I notice many folks in the Integrated Delivery World speak of "trust"; an unnatural state for strangers, I think. A delivery-model that prefers objectivity over trust is more likely to succeed. Why…if a design-builder can verify that their decisions are compliant with the contract, independent of the owner's opinion, then they are secure and not dependent on the owner for their 'contractual' success (only perceived perfection).

As a background: design-build has been used for about 20 years now. I know, some say DB has been an available delivery method for decades if not centuries. But I'm speaking 'mainstream' use. The Design-Build Institute of America was founded just 18 years ago, and until recently many states and public jurisdictions could not legally use design-build delivery. So, as I have inferred, design-build is new. I mention this to provide a context for the evolution of this 'new' method of contract and delivery for construction projects. In the 90's, moving in to the early 2000's, DB was widely used by the owner with some sort of preliminary design (solution). In federal contracting, a preliminary design of about 35% of full design was included in the Request for Proposals (RFP) by many agencies and departments. Inclusion of a preliminary design is often referred to as a "bridging" design or "bridging documents". Bridging documents are often inc...

I spend a fair amount of time traveling around the country teaching, presenting, and lecturing on integrated project delivery, collaboration, and acquisition management. I teach the "Owner's Series" course work for DBIA, I just presented a lecture at Drury University (my Alma Mater), I, along with the owner and design-builder, presented a performance-based design-build project at the AIA National Convention. I could go on (lucky for you, I won't)...I just finished a comment in my Linkedin discussion group, and thought I'd share it. During nearly all of these presentations and lectures I ask three (tongue-in-cheek) questions as an 'ice breaker' to get the audience thinking... How do you stump an designer? Answer: Give them a budget. How do you stump a builder? Answer: Give them a blank sheet of paper. How do you stump an owner? Answer: Ask them what they want. The point I want to make is that all three primary players involved in project delivery tr...

Consider this question, and you soon realize that Value-Engineering is usually used as a 'reactive tool' to correct a proposed solution for a given problem. Stated differently: VE is used to re-design a set of plans and specs to realign "the design" to fit "inside" the owner's budget. Conversely, the idea of Engineer-Value (EV) is an 'active tool' used to "guide" the solution to a given problem while concurrently maintaining alignment with (fitting in) the ownr's budget.  In defense of true Value Engineers , I recognize that VE is a process (in its purist form) that begins at the inception of a project. But in our industry, today, VE is more commonly used to "hack" the design apart to save money. The real offensive part of this mis-application of Value Engineering is that 'limited' resources have been consumed (fees paid, efforts of design, documentation, bidding the design documents, etc), and the time lost can...

Acquisition Evolution With regard to this blog, it concerns the "final outcome" (results) of an owner's Constuction Project. As this is my initial post, and have been wanting to share my views on Construction Project Owners pursuing "High Performance" project outcomes, a definition of "High Performance Outcome" (HPO) is in order. HPO is the absence of deviation between the identified needs of the Constuction Project Owner and the fulfillment of those needs by the Service Provider (designers & builders). Identified needs are those documented, in measurable form, and provided to the designer(s) and/or builder(s)that define what is to be fulfilled. Wow...pretty wordy! How about: "when the owner gets kind of what they expected, and is satisfied." For many of us, in the routines of the day, that would be an improvement. Count how many times you end up disappointed in the 'outcome' of a transaction. I forgot who said it, but ...