DBIA interviewed Richard G. Little, director of The Keston Institute for Public Finance and Infrastructure Policy at the University of Southern California, on the results of its latest report, The Impacts of Design-Build on the Public Workforce. The Institute was founded to help California and the nation address the critical infrastructure challenges facing the US. One of their core missions is to help advance the use of methods that will deliver needed capital projects faster and cheaper.
DBIA: What was the mission of this research project?
Little: “California makes limited use of design-build and concerns have been raised that the design-build method of procuring infrastructure projects could result in major staff cutbacks within public agencies in California. In order to evaluate this serious concern, the USC Keston Institute for Public Finance and Infrastructure Policy commissioned a study, The Impacts of Design-Build on the Public Workforce, to assess the workforce implications of design-build in those states that utilize it on a regular basis.”
DBIA: What prompted your interest in conducting this research?
Little: “California has a huge backlog of transportation projects as a result of years of funding constraints. Design-build is a proven tool that when used properly can save time and money on capital projects but California has been slow to embrace it because of concerns about potential negative impacts on the public workforce. We conceived of this project to determine if there were potential impacts and if so, how they might be mitigated so the funds from the transportation bonds approved in 2006 could be used as effectively as possible.”
DBIA: Which methods were utilized in conducting this research to ensure a fair and balanced report?
Little: “In order to evaluate this concern objectively, we retained a study team composed of Professor Douglas D. Gransberg of the University of Oklahoma and Professor Keith R. Molenaar of the University of Colorado, both of whom are internationally renowned for their work in this field. They employed a combination of literature review, surveys of state departments of transportation, and content analysis of design-build requests for proposals to answer the following question: What is the impact on the state department of transportation professional workforce when the state authorizes it to deliver infrastructure projects utilizing design-build project delivery?”
DBIA: Why has the emergence of design-build warranted a research project of this type?
Little: “We believe that design-build offers California the opportunity to deliver some projects faster and at less cost than using the traditional design-bid-build paradigm. Because this tool has been generally unavailable for use by Caltrans, we believed that an objective study of the workforce issues would be of use to the state Legislature as it considers rescinding restrictions on design-build.”
DBIA: What are the key findings of this project, and based on this research, what is the impact of design-build on State DOT Workforces?
Little: “The principal findings of this study are:
Implementing design-build contracting does not shift public professional engineering jobs from state agencies to the private sector.
Of the states with design-build experience, all indicated that they did not reduce their professional engineering workforce as a result of implementing design-build. Eighty-six percent of the respondents reported that their professional workforce either remained the same or increased in size.
Utilizing design-build contracting does not significantly reduce the use of the traditional design-bid-build method.
Ninety-three percent of the respondents indicated that design-build projects make up less than ten percent of their total number of construction projects of which eighty-nine percent indicated that design-build projects make up less than five percent. Thus, the traditional professional engineering workforce is required to deliver the remaining ninety percent of the projects using traditional contracting methods.
This study’s summary conclusion is:
Implementing design-build contracting by a department of transportation that is new to the delivery method will not have a negative effect on its public engineering workforce.
Implementing design-build will give the department one more tool to accelerate the delivery of critically needed transportation infrastructure projects and provide valuable professional development opportunities to agency staff. When applied to the appropriate projects, design-build has the potential to be more efficient than the traditional design-bid-build method without negatively impacting the public workforce.”
DBIA: Based on this research, does implementing design-build compromise the time, cost, and quality standards on an infrastructure project?
Little: “Implementing design-build does not compromise the time, cost, and quality standards that define success in infrastructure project delivery.
A recent report to Congress by the Federal Highway Administration, which detailed the performance of nearly all (over 300) of the design-build projects that had been completed through 2004, summed the performance of design-build projects as follows: ‘On average, the managers of design-build projects surveyed in the study estimated that design-build project delivery reduced the overall duration of their projects by 14 percent, reduced the total cost of the projects by three percent, and maintained the same level of quality as compared to design-bid-build project delivery.’
It is impossible to believe that sophisticated public owners, such as state DOTs, would propagate the spread of a delivery method that consistently resulted in substandard or poor quality product regardless of its ability to expedite project delivery.”
DBIA: How have DOTs used the design-build process to leverage the benefit of and address the concerns of outsourcing?
Little: “Several states indicated that they purposely assign their most experienced engineers to administer design-build projects. State DOTs will need to maintain a robust traditional design-bid-build project delivery program to balance the workload between entry-level design and construction engineers and more experienced staff. Entry-level personnel will need to gain the experience and develop the professional judgment necessary to allow them to become qualified to oversee design-build projects.”
DBIA: How may this report effect the perceptions of design-build?
Little: “The report found that perceptions remain a barrier to wider acceptance of design-build among public sector employees. Many public agency engineers believe that their roles will change and are unsure of the impact on the quality of their most important deliverable: the constructed infrastructure project. Some see implementing design-build as potentially reducing the need for public agency professional engineers. In light of this, there obviously needs to be continuing dialog between agency management and staff so that these concerns are addressed adequately. Formal outreach programs based on the findings of this report would no doubt be of help and we would be pleased to provide to anyone interested.
It may be downloaded at www.usc.edu/schools/sppd/keston/pdf/20070413-design-build.pdf.”
DBIA: Is there another research project that your team is working on?
Little: “We are currently looking for ways to ensure that the public interest is protected when states enter into public-private arrangements for transportation projects. This may also have implications for design-build because some of these projects use that method. We anticipate having the report available by early-June and would be pleased to share it with DATELINE readers.”
INFO: Keston Institute for Public Finance and Infrastructure Policy (www.usc.edu/keston)