Legislative Update

The Design-Build Institute of America (DBIA) was quite active at the end of 2008 and the beginning of this year with regard to the stimulus legislation that was a high priority for both Congress and the new administration. DBIA engaged with both the Senate and House leadership, in addition to the Senate and House Appropriations Committees, about the relevance and national-interest aspects of design-build as it pertains to federal-stimulus dollars for major projects. The purpose of this legislative initiative was to educate Capitol Hill on the fact that design-build, fast track and “shovel ready” are all synonymous, and that design-build should be the preferred project delivery method in terms of getting projects started earlier while putting people to work much more quickly on a nationwide basis.

Design-build had a strong ally with the development of the stimulus package, as we learned directly from the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), specifically the Office of Construction and Facilities Management, that the VA was meeting with Senate and House appropriators in making the case for VA projects across the country to receive stimulus funding. In fact, the VA emphasized that it would utilize design-build to fast-track projects that received stimulus funding. This was encouraging, as DBIA met with the VA’s Office of Construction and Facilities Management in October 2008 about the value of design-build. Another indication of how design-build is so highly regarded is in Mississippi, where the City of Gulfport worked with the state legislature at the beginning of this year in endeavoring to get new design-build legislation passed so that the Mississippi Gulf Coast could be in a position of strength for recovery monies. Historically, Mississippi has not been a strong design-build state, and with the long-term rebuilding in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, along with the recovery, these are very positive developments for the industry.

It remains to be seen what impact H.R. 1, The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, will have on the economy, but it is clearly a strong vehicle for the use of design-build. States, localities and beyond will be the beneficiaries if they can access stimulus/recovery funding while spending the recovery dollars quickly and efficiently, which translates into positive opportunities for design-build. The recovery dollars are flowing through federal agencies en route to all 50 states through a myriad of receiving statewide entities. All federal agencies will be impacted from the standpoint of recovery dollars, and the big winners in this initiative are agencies such as the General Services Administration, the National Institutes of Health, the Department of Homeland Security, the Department of Transportation and certainly others.

With DBIA’s comprehensive communications with Capitol Hill over the past many months, the dialogue has been good in terms of how government dollars are appropriated for design and construction of federal facilities, along with the need to change the process. The given here is that taxpayers’ dollars can be expended much more efficiently if appropriated funds are made available in one basket for design and construction as opposed to appropriating design funds one year and construction dollars a year or years later. Aside from these big-picture discussions with both appropriations and authorizing committees, which also entailed sessions with the Office of Management and Budget, DBIA’s undertakings here with authorizers in the House led to the specific suggestion that DBIA meet with the FBI about their eventual new headquarters in the greater Washington area. DBIA did meet effectively with the FBI in 2008 about how design-build could be a viable option for the FBI in what is likely to be a $1 billion headquarters complex.

Also for design-build, communications in Washington with NASA have highlighted the fact that this federal agency will be utilizing design-build more often in the future, as Congress has begun to cut funding for the design stage of NASA projects. Therefore, the NASA officials in the Facilities Engineering and Real Property Division have acknowledged that design-build will be the project-delivery method of choice going forward.

Whatever lies ahead, there are many interesting avenues for the use of design-build in the public sector, whether the stimulus/recovery; changing the way business is done in Washington in terms of availing federal dollars; federal agencies understanding the value of design-build; or upcoming legislation such as the five-year transportation (highway) authorization.