The Design-Build Institute of America (DBIA) has given recognition to the Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati’s Oakley Separation Sewer Project in the Water/Wastewater category for exemplary collaboration and integration in the design-build project delivery method.
The District managed to finish the project ahead of schedule in addition to saving more than $3.3 million (25% of the estimated cost). The design-build approach that was adopted by the design team very quickly (15 months total) eliminated two combined sewer overflows and incorporated the ability of several different companies.
WaterWorld reports:
“To win a National Design-Build Project/Team Award, projects must not only achieve budget and schedule goals, but also demonstrate advanced and innovative application of design-build best practices,” said Lisa Washington, CAE, Executive Director/CEO of DBIA. “Your winning project showcased how the project team went above and beyond achieving cost, schedule and quality goals, demonstrating unique applications of design-build best practices to raise the industry’s bar even higher.”
Brown and Caldwell Project Director Stephen Gates added, “This prestigious award is high praise for the excellent collaboration of the project team. The District is being recognized for its leadership in completing the first infrastructure project in the state using design-build contracting under Ohio Construction Reform — significantly reducing project costs and helping to hasten completion of a critical economic development project.”
Principal engineer Ali Bahar notes that “this project’s success has proven the benefits of a design-build approach.”
From an infrastructure asset management viewpoint much of the total lifecycle cost of the asset is locked in at construction – if the asset is well designed, fit for purpose, well-built to the right specification, with ease of maintainability – then it is likely that the total lifecycle costs will be at an optimal level.
As an alternative – if an asset is poorly designed, not fit for purpose, poorly constructed, and not easy to keep up then it is likely the total lifecycle costs will be much higher.
The type of Design-Build process used by Metropolitan Sewer District of Greater Cincinnati’s Oakley Separation Sewer Project as well as producing project cost savings and ahead of scheduled delivery is also likely to give optimized total lifecycle costs.
Design-Build is once of many infrastructure procurement methodologies.
Inframanage.com encourages readers to investigate the most appropriate method for each project and to keep infrastructure total lifecycle costs in the decision framework during these procurement investigations.
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