Design-Build

Blogging has been light as I have been working on a design-build competition. While I have no problem with design-build projects per se, I do object to design-build competitions. Here's how it works:

The client decides it has a need for a building. (in this case, a University decides it needs 1100 student residence beds, a dining hall, fitness center, game room, classrooms, and retail space)

The University solicits qualifications from design-build teams. Each team must contain architects and engineers to design the project and a contractor to build it. The three best qualified teams are selected to compete against each other for the privilege of completing the project.

Each team submits its proposal to the University. Proposals must include documents and drawings demonstrating the complete design, and a total cost to build the whole thing. This is where we are now. Our firm will spend upwards of $100,000 for a one-third shot at the prize. The entire team will likely be on the hook for something like $150,000 worth of effort.

After the proposals are submitted, the University will select the winner, with building design accounting for 45% of the scoring and total price for 55%. The winners will have their fees paid, including the cost of preparing the proposals, and the losers will go home empty handed.

The University, for its part, is free to pick any elements it likes from the losers proposal and ask the winner to execute them, essentially having "stolen" that intellectual capital. If the competing teams all spend the same $150,000 we expect to expend, the University will have been given $450,000 worth of ideas and effort, and will expend only $150,000 in fees. Pretty slick, huh?

I have been saying for many years that architects don't place a high enough value on their time. We are taught from freshman year in college to disregard the clock in order to explore every last design option of every project. The result is a process that goes on and on, without a sense of completion or resolution, and one for which nobody could ever justify fees representative of the effort expended. A lawyer would never talk for five minutes without billing for his time, yet architects think nothing of spending hours agonizing over whether to use brass or bronze door hardware, before deciding on chrome.

Our willingness to participate in design-build competitions for a chance at payment is another manifestation of that mentality.