Owner Management of Design-Build Project Execution - Design-Build for Water and Wastewater Projects - page 224

complete of individual components instead of measurable completed work. An owner may
be overly cautious about paying for work when there is not an easy physical way to verify
percent complete; however, the owner must balance this with the need to ensure that cash
flow is consistent with progress so as not to delay the project. Additional information on
progress reports and payments can be found in WDBC's Handbook (2010).
Project Execution Schedule
It is important that the owner provide as much information as possible concerning sched-
ule constraints, external requirements, and potential interfaces that could have an impact
on the design-builder's ability to plan, design, and perform the work. Contractually, the
owner does not want to be in a position of having critical information impacting schedule
and cost that was not shared. The owner should make certain that the DB team is able
to plan around possible impacts so that work proceeds smoothly. The owner should also
limit the schedule restrictions to those that are absolutely necessary so that the design-
builder's flexibility is not impacted.
Design Oversight by the Owner
Owners are comfortable with the traditional design process, which has multiple review
workshops throughout the design. This process allows many opportunities to conceptual-
ize the finished project, gather the stakeholders to gain their design preferences, and make
incremental changes throughout the design. In DB, the owner still has some design input
and oversight, but it is executed differently. For DB, the owner's input is divided into two
stages: before procurement or selection of the design-builder and after. First, there is a
need to describe the proposed facility in the RFQ and/or RFP. At this stage of the project,
there is little or no detailed information available to help understand what the finished
project will consist of or look like. Second, once the design-builder has been contracted
and detailed design is in progress, the owner remains involved in the design through design
review workshops. The pace and changes in the process of design in DB may result in the
owner being less eager to request changes that could result in a change to the contract.
Design activities prior to design-builder procurement. Sufficient planning and
predesign activity are needed to adequately describe what the project is intended to do,
the influent and effluent requirements, quality levels, regulatory issues, environmental
and energy constraints, cost and schedule parameters, and specific requirements or
restrictions that may be unique to the project. This information is in the conceptual
documentation that bidders use to prepare their proposals. This is explained in more
detail in chapter 13 and shown graphically in Figure 18-1, which shows how the design-
builder's flexibility and the owner's and design-builder's roles and responsibilities change
depending on the how much design the owner elects to provide.
Deciding how much information and design to perform before procurement of the
design-builder depends on the project and expectations of the owner. Typically, an owner
would want to provide as much information as possible about how the facility is to per-
form, the intended site, and details of known constraints (e.g., time frame for any tie-ins).
If sufficient information is not provided, bidders are faced with higher proposal prepara-
tion costs to cover investigative tasks and limited time to prepare bids due to an increased