Design Management in Design-Build Project Base on Design Team of Contractor Perspective

The Design – Build method has many advantages, contractors have to manage some new factors that are not their responsibilities based on the traditional project approach such as design duty, quality of design, design management issues and even authorities approval.

After the contract is awarded, main contractor or design-builder have to established design team promptly and set some roles for each design member as well as define obviously the project scope. Therefore communication, coordination and collaboration between the design teams are significant key leads to project success.

On the other hand, design team also take care authorities submission – a sensitive point which affect project schedule – concurrent with design development progress. Design management had to deal with both tasks in tight schedule, construction permission deadline pressure and balance between main contractor requirements and the owner needs.

Experience was also an issue that design management had to deal with. In order to save design fee, main contractor normally tended to hire design teams whose competence was just enough to develop the preliminary design that provided by the owner. Meanwhile experience of design team who could find out mistakes from the owner concept as well as control changes at initial project phase was underestimated.

These above factors may be due to some inherent problems that contractors and owners have to deal with in Design-Build process. Therefore, Mr. Nguyen Cao Bao Luat made a study to investigate the following issues:

- Coordination and communication between parties
- Lack of time and inexperience design team
- Level of concept and preliminary design which conducted by owner
- Change order and extra work orders
- Design error

The objectives of his study were to: (1) identify design management problem in D-B projects base on architectural design perspective; (2) investigate the nature of problems in order to find causes and solution; and (3) propose a system how to manage design: coordination, interaction for design-build project.

Conclusions

Lessons Learned from JCV Project case study

According to project final report document which done by both contactor and the owner at JCV project, the essential lessons that they learned are as follows:

1. Design-Build team should be carefully chosen in term of experience by the owner;
2. Involved parties should be prepared carefully to deliver the project;
3. Preliminary design which done by the owner should be enough information and specification of performance should be priority;
4. The owner should leave design guidelines "loose," because design-build team will work creatively under performance criteria; and
5. Communications among the involved parties should be opened and maintained particular between design team and the owner.

Summary of lessons learned form case study based on design team perspective


Some keys to success for design – build project in particular for design management

1. The owner and design-build team should create a collaborative environment for working at the beginning of the project. Good communication among key team members and understanding between designer and builder are keys leading to project success.

2. The owner should select and work with the pre-qualified design-build team who has previous experience with similar project types is the essential core. The design-build team experience helps the owner study geographic location and commit that design-build team have ability to deliver a good design and quality of construction are key factors.

3. The owner should make sure that the level of designer team and construction team are meeting the requirement organization of the project, because at equal level, communication will be effective in term of team performance.

4. Take the contractor/construction team into the project as soon as possible to review the concept as well as technical drawing. The contractor should be expected to participate in the preliminary design.

5. The owner should use a concept design to work with the design-builder team to develop a preliminary design. Make design decisions early starting with the Customer Concept Document, Request for Proposal and Concept Design.

His thesis abstract is copied and posted.

Abstract

Design and build is a method of project delivery in which the design and construction phases of a project are combined into the contract, usually awards on either a low bid or best-value basic.

In design-build, the A/E firm and construction contractor have an incentive to become and integrated team that works concurrently on the design and construction phase of different segments of a project, with the potential to expedite delivery and better control product quality and cost.

However, design-build has a few drawbacks, as well.

• The system's short-cut design process. Some steps are reduced
• Owner has their own conceptual planning and schematic design which may not be done by professional A/E firm. The level of preliminary design will impact cost and quality in design development stage and construction stage also.
• The builder is also the designer, it is only natural to expect that the designs will gravitate to technologies most preferable (read profitable) to the builder.
• Inherent checks and balances between design and construction teams no longer independent.

Even though Design–Build (DB) arrangements have several advantages, project contractors are still studying and improving it. This may be due to some inherent problems that both contractors and owners have to face in their D-B projects. This study investigates the problems and difficulties that design team of contractor deal with and how can help the contractor overcome these problems though design management.