Design-Build Procurement Approaches - Design-Build for Water and Wastewater Projects - page 65

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Design-Build
Procurement Approaches
Douglas Herbst, DBIA, Brown and Caldwell, and
Samuel A. Edmondson, PE, BCEE, Brown and Caldwell
INTRODUCTION
Owners are very familiar with the traditional, or design-bid-build (DBB), procurement
approach for infrastructure projects. It has been practiced for decades and, as a result,
is well understood by all involved parties, with established legal precedents and known
insurance, bonding, and other additional requirements. Traditional DBB procurement is
based on the lowest price from responsive contractor bidders; this presents owners with
some challenges and issues. Low-price bids do not always represent the best value to an
owner or the project, because they do not allow for an evaluation of the proposer's experi-
ence with similar projects (i.e., water, wastewater, biosolids, or pipelines) or other criteria
that may be important to the owner (e.g., safety, financial standing, and past performance).
Because of these issues, more and more owners have investigated and are implementing
their water and wastewater infrastructure with design-build (DB).
There are five procurement approaches for DB: (1) direct negotiation; (2) qualifi-
cations-based selection (QBS); (3) best-value selection (BVS); (4) progressive DB; and,
(5) price-based (i.e., stipulated or lump sum). Within these approaches, there is flexibility
to select the methodology that best suits the needs of the owner. This chapter describes
the types of DB procurement approaches and discusses the benefits and challenges for
each. Other topics related to selecting the appropriate DB approach for a project include
the legal feasibility, which is also discussed.
PROCUREMENT GOALS
The goals of any DB project procurement process should be to:
• Attract the best competition from the qualified DB teams
• Obtain an acceptable market price for the DB services
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