July 4, 2012

Exploring collaborative project delivery

WARREN FREY

digital media editor

Evolving procurement practices and the benefits of integrated project delivery were discussed by construction professionals at a recent conference in Vancouver.

Kees Cusveller, vice president of business development and preconstruction services for Graham Group, was speaking at the Canadian Institute's Collaborative Project Delivery Conference.

He said integrated project delivery is new to Canada and is usually single party contracts, but can involve multiple parties.

Resources are shared, as is risk, to an extent.

Cusveller examined current delivery methods, which include design-bid-build, construction management (either at risk or agent-based), design build, cost reimbursable and unit price.

Design build works well for cost effective projects, but usually has minimum outline specs that quickly become the maximum.

Changes can be costly, and there is often limited interaction between the owner and the architect.

As well, everything is driven on the first cost of the project. The preset fixed price design build model is new, and has been used in Western Canada.

He pointed to the Royal Alberta Museum as an example of the model.

The advantages are that the award is based on design and a preset fixed budget.

The disadvantage is that the price must be appropriate, and it’s an “all or nothing” award. The process can also be time consuming and costly for contractors.

Forces influencing design and construction include new societal expectations, Cusveller said.

Safety standards have become much stricter, and waste and lack of productivity are much less tolerated than 20 or 30 years ago.

Building hasn’t fundamentally changed from the way things were done even 100 years ago, and weak productivity increases reflect that, he added.

Technological evolution is also driving change and has completely changed how work is done in the construction industry, with the exception of the jobsite, Cusveller said.

From an owner’s perspective, with fixed and limited capital budgets, transparency is extremely important. There’s also a new emphasis on Life Cycle Analysis when building, he said. Consultants are being asked to reduce fees and do more for less. There’s also an increasing use of Building Information Modeling (BIM) and an expectation of fully co-ordinated documents.

There’s also a big gap between senior management and people on the site in terms of age and experience, Cusveller added.

All of this contributes to two new and opposing trends, a focus on alliance building and on single source contracting.

The problems with design-bid-build include fragmented teams, a linear process that creates silos, individually managed risk, and individually pursued compensation. Communication is paper-based, and the relationships can be adversarial.

This story is based on a blog from the Canadian Institute's Collaborative Project Delivery Conference.

Print | Comment