Model for Public Sector Design-Build Project Selection

TLDR

Public sector owners are increasingly adopting design‑build procurement, driven by new laws, documented successes, and its departure from traditional design‑bid‑build methods. The study analyzes 122 case studies to develop an automated tool for selecting public sector design‑build projects. The authors built prediction models for five performance criteria—budget variance, schedule variance, conformance to expectations, administrative burden, and overall user satisfaction—using project, owner, market, and relationship variables. Key success factors identified are scope, schedule, and budget definition, project complexity, agency experience and staffing, owner design input, design‑build market, design‑builder prequalification, and selection method.

Abstract

Public sector owners are rapidly identifying new construction procurement methods. Changing procurement laws and documented project success are encouraging owners to attempt the design-build method of project procurement. Design-build is a radical departure from the traditional design-bid-build method. This paper reports on the analysis of 122 case studies and the resulting automated tool for public sector design-build project selection. Prediction models are developed for five performance criteria that correlate specific project characteristics to success. Performance criteria and associated models include budget variance, schedule variance, conformance to expectations, administrative burden, and overall user satisfaction. Project characteristics are categorized as project, owner, market, and relationship variables. Statistically significant correlations with success include scope definition, schedule definition, budget definition, project complexity, agency experience, agency staffing, owner design input, design-build market, design-builder prequalification, and method of selection.