Following this year’s DBIA Transportation / Aviation Conference in Orlando, ENR released an article “Transportation World Eyes Benefits of Progressive Design-Build”. It highlighted one of the informative sessions at the conference with the lead sentence, “The transportation construction world continues to learn lessons about risk and relationships in design-build…it is starting to move toward progressive design-build.” The advantage being seen with Progressive Design-Build (PDB) is qualifications-based selection, where the engineer, contractor, and owner act as one team to develop scope and design with maximum transparency and creativity.
The results have been shown to speed up the construction process and reduce the need to price in risk. With the increase in Federal funding, transportation projects’ transition to PDB are gaining momentum . Craig Snyder, President of T2ue in the US, attended that session and heard panelists discussing the effectiveness of utility risk management and collaboration as central to project success. He shared, “This aligns with T2 Utility Engineers expertise in providing professional Subsurface Utility Engineering (SUE), survey, and Utility Coordination (UC) services that meet the ASCE 38 Standard, which is also supported as best practice by the FHWA and regulatory agencies.”
Our team has worked closely with numerous D-B teams from the proposal stage through ribbon-cutting to ensure potential utility conflicts are identified and addressed either through conflict mitigation or a negotiated protect-in-place decision. A detailed conflict analysis is central to the process and is developed using SUE data and Utility Coordination. A cooperative effort involving engineers, contractors, owners, and utility companies and starting with reliable utility data is essential for establishing and managing risk, cost, and project schedule. Learn more about our D-B experience.