The History of Design-Build - Design-Build for Water and Wastewater Projects - page 5

Unfortunately for DB, the approach promoted by the AIA dovetailed neatly with prevail-
ing government practice, which was to maintain a government workforce for construction
activities with separate contracts for design services. As a result, the government increas-
ingly began to codify the use of DBB and it became the generally accepted model. The
use of DB fell dramatically.
However, as time went on, the Industrial Revolution that had helped drive the use
of DBB through the advent of standardization, remote manufacture, and highly exact
and repeatable dimensions, now conspired against it. As design and construction became
increasingly complex, a single individual or firm could not know or understand the total-
ity of the many variables involved. At the turn of the twentieth century, standardization
made possible by improved manufacturing techniques had actually decreased the diffi-
culty of achieving coherent design. Gradually, however, designers were increasingly faced
with a plethora of technologies, manufacturers, and components, especially for water and
wastewater projects. The variety of technologies became increasingly complex and contin-
ued to expand. To successfully deal with this increased complexity, it became more desir-
able to integrate the knowledge, skill, and experience of many different team members.
Design-build is ideal for exactly that environment.
Through the early to mid-1900s, DBB predominated for key projects and owners.
However, in the 1940s, the Naval Facilities Engineering Command turned to DB to satisfy
the demand for housing projects driven by World War II. In the 1960s, National Aero-
nautics and Space Administration (NASA) began to experiment with DB. The space race
was exactly the kind of challenge (i.e., complex, difficult, and requiring extraordinary
teamwork) at which DB could excel. The US Department of Housing and Urban Devel-
opment (HUD) in 1968 began supporting the use of DB turnkey projects under author-
ity provided by the US Housing Act of 1937. The technique based contract award on the
highest-rated turnkey proposal, representing the best total package .
Federal Laws
In 1972, the Brooks Act amended the Federal Property and Administrative Services Act
of 1949 that had established the General Services Administration (GSA). The act required
all federal agencies to select architects/engineers based on their qualifications, not cost,
in a process characterized as a qualifications-based selection (QBS). The law specifically
precluded cost from being used as a consideration for selection, with cost negotiations
being conducted with only the successful offeror, or proposer, after selection. Although
the Brooks Act has sometimes caused confusion with respect to authority to award DB
contracts, its promotion of QBS represented a significant step forward for the use of DB.
Following passage of the Brooks Act, two additional laws have enhanced the use of
best-value source selection for DB. The Federal Acquisition Streamlining Act of 1994 and
the National Defense Authorization Act of 1996 permitted the federal government to use
two-phase source selection procedures to award DB services. The portion of the 1996 act
that authorized the two-phase selection procedures was later renamed the Clinger-Cohen
Act. Under these laws, agencies can make a determination that DB is appropriate for use
on a project and then use a two-phase source selection procedure.
In the first phase of the source selection, proposals are evaluated with respect to the
specialized experience and technical competence of the offerors. During this first phase,