If you are a design-build professional in Southern California, the place to be in late September every year is the annual Design-Build Symposium, sponsored by the University of California, Irvine, held at the prestigious Beckman Center of the National Academies of Science and Engineering, adjacent to the campus.
Now in its seventh year, this popular conference brings together architects, engineers, general contractors, specialty contractors, attorneys, owners, and other industry leaders of project delivery services to share their hands-on design-build experiences, both on and off the UCI campus. The Symposium offers the opportunity to network and interact with prominent leaders in the design and construction community, and to hear from a cadre of carefully selected presenters who speak on state-of-the-art design-build issues.
The Symposium is the brainchild of Associate Vice Chancellor Rebekah Gladson, the UCI campus architect. Gladson, the official university representative on all major capital improvement projects at UCI and the chief administrator of the Design & Construction Services Department, put it best:
“Design-build is the wave of the future at UCI, but a lot of education will be needed. We want the highest caliber professional firms to respond to our request for proposals. To get this, though, we’re investing in our future by educating potential partners about the principles and practices of design-build, especially at UCI.”
Gladson’s vision clearly took hold. The first Design-Build Symposium in 1999 met with such positive response that a repeat performance was mandatory. It became clear in the first year that the Symposium was also a powerful vehicle for building relationships between all the major construction sectors. Gladson states, “The relationships with the field are as important as the bricks and mortar that go into successful design and construction on the UCI campus, and the Annual Design-Build Symposium provides the opportunity to build on those relationships and to construct a blueprint for innovative collaboration.”
With its fresh and frank exchange of ideas, the Design-Build Symposium attracts over fifty corporate sponsors and sells out every year. Speakers such as Walker Lee Evey and Craig Unger of the DBIA have shared the podium with local contractors and their “in-the-field” experiences, as well as with nationally known architects and project managers. Participants get a valuable “how-to” on how to do business with the University of California, as well as updates on the most current practices in design-build delivery, especially as it impacts the UCI campus.
The theme this year is Design-Build: Melding Cultures for Success. According to Gladson, this theme was selected to recognize the importance of working together smoothly. “All of us who live and work in today’s complex construction environment know that our success depends on the skillful blending of our team cultures,” Gladson says. “We each bring our own distinctive culture and expectations to design-build projects, and teams that mesh well make real innovation happen.”
Design-Build is facing a challenging and exciting future at UCI. The 90-plus members of the university’s Design and Construction Services Department have a charter to build a world-class university, and pending construction projects are currently budgeted in excess of $1.2 billion over the next ten years. This figure will grow since the university is slated to double in size in the next decade, surpassing all other growth periods in UCI’s history. The university has brought design-build theory and practice to its most ambitious project to date: the $375 million UCI Medical Center Replacement Hospital, slated for completion in 2008. The ground-breaking design-build delivery method for the hospital project at UCI has been a featured topic of the last two Design-Build Symposiums, and will continue to be a key focus until its completion. Lessons learned are readily shared in a courageous and open environment at the Symposium, as design and construction professionals exchange ideas to contribute to the university’s future.
For more information or to register for the UCI seventh Annual Design-Build Symposium, contact the Symposium Coordinator at 800-410-4234 or visit the Symposium website at www.designbuildsymposium.uci.edu.