Posted on 01/16/2006 2:01:57 PM PST by NormsRevenge
Gov. Schwarzenegger, eager to see his proposed transportation plan carried out quickly, is turning to an approach to construction that proved disastrous for Riverside County.
The governor is pushing for the state to embrace the "design-build" method that typically enables contractors to finish projects quicker by handling both design and construction. The traditional construction model calls for an architect to design the project and a contractor to build it, which takes longer.
Riverside County used design-build to construct a complex of courthouses, jail cells and a juvenile hall near Murrieta. The Southwest Justice Center was expected to cost about $50 million, but costs spiraled to at least $104 million.
Then-county supervisor Jim Venable called it "the worst deal I have ever seen in my life." County officials said, in retrospect, that they should have kept closer tabs on their contractor and better maintained their own costs.
Despite that experience, county transportation officials endorse the governor's enthusiasm for design-build. Transportation projects are a model of how the process can work, said Eric Haley, executive director of the Riverside County Transportation Commission.
"It's about as different from the justice center as I can conceive," he said. Using design build for a road project is a simpler process than using the method for putting up government buildings, Haley said.
Schwarzenegger stated in his preliminary budget message that using design-build would save time and money on road projects - nearly $1 billion over 10 years.
"Design-build can have efficiencies in both cost and time," spokesman Vince Solitto said. "Building our state's critical infrastructure cheaply and more quickly is certainly a goal of this governor."
Caltrans enjoyed great success with design-build when it refurbished in record time interstates 5 and 10 after the Northridge earthquake, said Doug Failing, a district director for the state road agency.
"It's a way for us to get the contractor started sooner," Failing said. "Design-build is one tool that can be used very effectively, but all these tools need to be used at the right time for the right reasons."
Caltrans does not have the authority to utilize the design-build process and has used it only with special permission, Failing said. But several various proposed bills would provide that authority and/or the ability to use something called "design sequencing." The latter process keeps the design separate from the contractor but allows construction to start on one phase while latter phases are still being designed.
Design-build has been criticized for limiting the number of firms that can bid on a project because they must provide a large financial bond that the government agency contracting the builder can tap in case of problems. Typically, only very large firms can provide such bond, but Failing said that would be the case even without design-build.
"That has more to do with the size of the project more than the method of construction," he said.
Design-build usually saves time but often does not yield the lowest bid, said Richard Belle, vice president of public affairs/information for the Design-Build Institute of America, a trade organization in Washington D.C.
But he said a design-build project likely will be completed faster and be of higher quality.
"That is why the construction industry is so enthusiastic about it," Belle said. "We've had great success in highways."
Time is the real issue, Haley said.
"It could save us considerable time. I don't have the same confidence in it being dramatically cheaper," Haley said. "But if we can save two or three years on a project, we can serve hundreds of thousands of people more quickly."
Yeah, but I betcha those gold-plated toilet seats are way bitchin'!
I doubt design-build was the problem. The problem was the government was involved. What they need to do is hire a contractor for a set budget and then leave it up to the contractor to handle everything. The problem is this almost never happens. What they do is they hire a contrator and then start changing things and conditions and many times contrators low bid knowing they can get the gov to approve increases as new expenses arise. How often do you hear of building projects for private companies going over budget? The reason why we don't hear about it is because they have an incentive not to let it happen where with the government there is a reverse incentive to efficiency and it isn't just with building projects. I see it all the time at work.
Just recently it was decided to change a number for one of our operations. Who decided what no one knows but what also no one knows is why it was necessary at all. The beauty of it is that the core systems tracking the operation of the hundreds of locations, including the one that is having its id changed, is not equiped to accomodate the change because this kind of thing is not supposed to happen. So instead of just changing the number in the database like a sane person would and saving time and money it was decided that both the old id and the new would remain and all the reporting systems would be changed to make it look like only the new id existed rather than just retiring the old id to a historical database.
If you have never worked with databases or applications development then I forgive you if you don't understand the significance of this but in terms of money it is a waste of thousands of dollars and effort that would not only be a waste now but would guarantee that sometime in the future this same discontinuity will have to be taken into account and either fixed or more likely integrated into new systems which would forever have to do a special check for one little id for one little operation in the north atlantic until someone decides to close the little operation.
What is really amusing is how more often than not the government will change contractors several times and never realize that it was never the contractors that were the problem but instead the government managers who lack the competence to manage the contractors they have. So over the course of a project one contractor is dumped and another is brought on and essentially the same people are in charge. lol It is often like working at an idiot factory where it always seems that no one is responsible for anything but those who have no control over anything.
IMHO, anyone who contracts a construction job without plans and specs is going to have the contractors eat their lunch.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.