Design-Build / Alternative Project Delivery

Choosing the right project delivery method for your project can have a critical impact on the quality, cost, and schedule. Engineering-led design-build offers single-point accountability, streamlined project management, budget and cost control, tighter schedules, and performance guarantees. But is design-build the best approach for your project? Let’s find out.

When Technical Complexity, Strained Resources, and Schedule Collide

If you can answer “yes” to any of the questions below, a design-build delivery method could be your ticket to reducing your risk and producing a successful project outcome.

☑️ Is my project technically complex?
☑️ Is my project’s schedule critical to our operation?
☑️ Am I strained for resource capacity, including time and team members to juggle multiple priorities?

When project sites and/or processes require heavy integration to sync collectively and achieve operational goals, an engineering-led approach can help mitigate resulting risks. This approach also allows construction partners to be in lockstep during the dynamic design updates on fast-paced projects. Design-build delivery allows the design and construction phases to overlap, resulting in faster delivery time.

Flexibility Leads to the Ability to Influence Project Outcomes

Not all projects are the same, and different factors drive different business decisions and outcomes. With design-build delivery, the ability to influence cost, resources, and schedule often intersect to hit an optimal sweet spot. But we also understand not every schedule is critical, and factors such as corporate governance and procurement standards may require design-bid-build delivery. Foth’s flexibility allows for support of either project delivery.

Positive Cost Impacts of Design-Build

Design-build projects can achieve a combination of cost savings and cost avoidance through early cost feedback, value engineering, streamlined procurement, enhanced collaboration, and reduced project timelines.

Recent Project Example:

• Refrigeration project ($30M) for a major U.S. food client
• Preliminary engineering completed by Foth, including a design-bid-build vs. design-build analysis
• Our client selected engineering-led design-build as the best delivery method for the project due to the estimated cost avoidance