In 1913, Pennsylvania passed a law called “The Separations Act”. The law requires any public entity to separately bid and award the General Construction, Plumbing, HVAC and Electrical portions of any construction project.

If you work in PA public projects, you know the nightmare of inefficiency that flows from this project delivery method. If you don’t, just imagine four contractors all contractually bound to the Owner but not to each other. One scumbag low bidder creates havoc for the entire team.

I just read in this week’s ENR letters that PA is one of the only states that uses this archaic approach. While the highly efficient Design-Build approach could be utilized in PA, the Separations Act effectively precludes it.

So the state continues to waste hundreds of millions of dollars because of political inertia. I hope PA legislatures work together to modernize the procurement process toward commonsense efficiency.