Yesterday, I posted about a public design-bid project with a budget so wrong that the project needed cancelled after it had begun. I closed the post proclaiming that the time for design-build on public projects has come. Today I read an ENR article about a $1.1 Billion Utah highway and bridge project that illustrated one of the problems with public design-build: sore losers and their ability to litigate.

The Utah DOT made a request for proposal for upgrading a 24 mile highway section near Provo.

The design-build finalists were each paid $1.5 Million to prepare their designs and proposals that were judged on budget, highest value, schedule, design and public inconvenience. The Provo River Constructors team (led by Fluor Corp) bested the Flatiron-Skanska-Zachry team by one point.

Apparently the Flatiron-Skanska-Zachry design was elegant and included additional bridges, lanes and pedestrian access. That added scope, however, worried the Utah DOT executive director John Njord:

“They had an elegant design that could only be partly implemented,” Njord says. “It would have to go through an environmental review process. We liked their ideas, but we didn’t know if it could really be achieved.”

Rather than allow the project to be delayed by litigation from the second place finisher, Njord agreed to a $13 Million settlement. While that’s only about 1% of project cost, the political implication of giving away $13 M remains to be seen.

I still believe our society needs to move in the design-build direction, even though some of the steps will be quite challenging.