Design/Build

Design/Build

• Our team can provide a complete turnkey program for your new or renovated facility. By combining the conceptual programming, design services, and the delivery mechanism into a single comprehensive program, your company can realize substantial cost savings and time-to-market benefits over traditional construction methods.

• What is Design/Build?
   
  • The design/build approach is where the design and construction of a facility (or a portion of that facility) are awarded to a single company as opposed to the traditional approach of hiring an architectural team, an engineering team, special systems engineers and others to design the facility, then assigning the completed design to the selected contractor.
    
     
• What are the benefits and/or risks associated with Design/Build?
   
  • Many traditional companies will tell you that design/build is the equivalent of "letting the fox guard the henhouse", and that you should never have your design team made up of the same folks who will be performing the construction or installation. Some folks see design/build as handing a blank check to your contractor.  We, and many others, believe that this thinking is antiquated, and results in a lot of wasted time and money.
     
  • The traditional construction process is very regimented, and as a result, typically very slow. Selection of an architect and consulting engineers is only the first step. Once these folks have been chosen, the design process begins, with a lot of coordination taking place between all of the various firms involved in the design. Sometimes, this goes quite smoothly and quickly, but more often than not, communication between the parties can be slow, and development time is usually substantial. Once a final design is in place, selection of a general contractor begins. Once the GC is finally in place, they will need to finalize their selection of subcontractors, as they rarely have all of this cast in stone at the time they are selected. Don't forget - many of these subcontractors now need to go out and finalize their selections of second-tier subcontractors, as well. As you can see, quite a bit of time has passed by the time that all of the contract documents are finalized and in most cases, many weeks of precious time have been lost.
     
  • Design/build is typically much more effective, particularly with respect to critical facilities. This is true for several reasons. First, the assignment of all responsibility and risk to a single contractor makes them, in effect, your partner in the project. They are now so vested in the success of the project that they can no more afford delays or mistakes than you can, and they are that much more motivated to produce both designs and a finished product in a timely manner. Second, most design/build firms have a more or less consistent team that they work with, including the designers, subcontractors and 2nd tier subs. Because the team is more tightly integrated, miscommunication and delays are minimized. The time for all of these folks to produce the working system or facility is substantially reduced. Reducing the time to complete, reducing the number of separate firms involved in the process (and reducing the amount of time to coordinate between them), reducing miscommunication, and reducing the number of people that your in-house team have to coordinate with all save time, and therefore, money. Most design/build projects are performed with set design fees and either a firm fixed price (lump sum) or GMAX (guaranteed maximum) price for the construction portion, and this can help reduce your overall cost of construction. However, most firms that call themselves "design/build" are really "design/subcontract" firms that provide construction management services, but rarely self-perform any of the actual work, subcontracting up to 98% of the actual work performed.
     
  • Our approach is a bit different. We have both in-house and partner resources for the design elements, much like our competition. Unlike our competition, however, we will perform anywhere from 30-100% of the work with our own personnel. Truthfully, this depends on a number of variables, including geographic location, licensure, available manpower, etc. On average, we perform roughly half of the work with our own resources, and we are working to increase that percentage each year. There are very few companies in the country that self-perform as much work as we do, and fewer still that provide a higher level of self-performed work. We simply believe that the more work we perform ourselves, the more we can control the quality of the work; the more we can exercise control over the project schedule; and the more cost we can drive out of the project. These cost savings are passed on to our clients.
    
     
• We'd love to discuss our design/build approach with you and your team. Please call or e-mail us.

   

   

  NetStructures, Inc. 
         
  9800 East Easter Avenue, Suite 140, Centennial, Colorado  80112
  800.478.0015 toll-free         303.539.0080 phone        303.539.0081 fax

  21690 Red Rum Drive, Suite 162, Ashburn, Virginia  20147
  800.478.0015 toll-free        703.953.1115 phone        703.953.2159 fax

  1014 Pico Blvd, Suite 4, Santa Monica, CA 90405
  800.478.0015 toll-free     310.844.7833 phone     310.464.2041 fax