DBIA is in the midst of celebrating 15 years, encouraging and growing with the project delivery method that has been around for literally thousands of years. But when DBIA came on the scene in 1993, it wasn’t the talk of the town by any stretch of the imagination. For example, building project admirers around the world often didn’t realize as they were looking at masterpieces such as the cathedral Santa Maria del Fiore, containing the cupola designed by master builder Filippo Brunelleschi, that they were looking at design-build. But that all changed in 1993 with the creation of DBIA.
Preston Haskell, DBIA’s first chairman, talked with DATELINE recently about his experience with DBIA in the beginning and where he sees integrated project delivery heading in the future.
Haskell founded The Haskell Company in 1965 and already knew the benefits of integrated project delivery. “Although we did do CM work and a little bit of construct only work in our early years, we soon became an integrated design-build organization,” Haskell says.
Around 1969 and 1970, Haskell had its own in-house staff and began really focusing on design-build. “Throughout the ’80s and early ’90s a number of other design-builders and I had periodic discussions about forming an industry organization to represent the interests of design-builders, and at several points during that time I had discussions with existing organizations such as AIA and AGC about possibly forming a practice section within that organization for design-build,” Haskell says. “There was some interest in doing that, but we came to the conclusion in late ’92 and early ’93 that a separate organization — exclusively representing the interests of design-build delivery — would be preferable to being just a small section of a larger practice organization.”
In February 1993, Haskell gathered about 15 executives of major design-build firms and other companies interested in design-build to a dinner meeting and then an additional half-day meeting the next day in Washington. This productive meeting was the beginning of DBIA, Haskell says. At the time, however, design-build was still considered “nontraditional,” with construction management and design-bid-build the preferred project delivery forms. Haskell reasoned that design-build backers needed an organization to represent the interest of design-builders.
“The fact [was] that design-build was a relatively new delivery system and it had been practiced in various forms over the years, but not in a big way,” Haskell says. “And none of the public agencies — no governmental bodies — had authority to deliver projects by design-build.”
More than anything, public and private owners all needed convincing, and it’s a process Haskell says is still necessary today. “It’s the same fundamental situation of entrenched delivery systems versus new and innovative delivery systems,” he says, “and [it’s a matter of] overcoming the hurdles and the sort of built-in lethargies and prejudices and old habits that take time to overcome.”
Over the years, however, even through a lot of changes and design-build evolution, Haskell says the design-build message remains the same. “Fundamentally no, we have not [changed],” he says. “When I’m on the stump, so to speak, I still preach time savings, cost savings, early knowledge of firm cost and single responsibility — those have always been the four big selling points of design-build.”
But he adds that the order of importance of these concepts varies from client to client and project to project. Essentially, however, those four design-build advantages are as important today as they were 15 years ago.
Today, however, design-build is much more acceptable and more widely used than in years past, and the trends point to wider use the in the future. “The legislation at both the state and federal level has opened up vast new public markets for design-build, although there’s still a lot of work to be done in that regard,” Haskell says. “Even though certain agencies and jurisdictions have the statutory and regulatory authority to contract design-build, some of them are still entrenched in the old habits and are difficult to change, but that takes time.” This was a little challenging for a design-build proponent 15 years ago.
“I guess one of my early things was I thought we could do it all overnight,” Haskell says. “I learned to be patient and to take the necessary time to persuade both public and private owners of the merits of design-build.”
One of the things he notices today is the uneven nature of design-build delivery, particularly instances where design-build gets a bad name because some out there practicing it do a poor job, and an owner might say that he tried it and was unsuccessful. “That’s something that we’ve had to overcome is to make sure people know what they’re doing when they practice and deliver design-build and make sure the owners know how to procure and how to contract and what to expect,” he says. Another positive about the ever-changing environment, however, is that design-build is a known commodity: “We’re not having to sell design-build as much as we used to,” Haskell says. “People know about it; there is a greater level of familiarity, but making sure that everybody that practices design build does it in a highly competent and successful fashion, to me, is a challenge.”
Positive signs of design-build evolution, he says, are things such as the I-35 bridge project in Minneapolis (see “DBIA News” for more information on this project).
“I’m happy to see more design-builders being selected on qualifications rather than on best value,” he says. “I think we’ve pretty well moved away from price-only design-build competition [but] there’s still a little bit out there. The method of selection has moved away from a ‘price nominated’ one to a ‘qualifications nominated’ one, particularly in the private sector. … the words ‘best value’ are becoming more and more acceptable, not only in design-build construction but in other areas of our economy where people used to buy on the basis of price only; they’re now purchasing on the basis of best value.”