Blog

Addressing the Craft Labor Shortage

Posted on October 12, 2018 by Kristine Thorpe, Corporate Business Development Manager for Flatiron Constructors' U.S. Water Group and WDBC Communications Committee Member

“Can we fix it? Yes, we can!” If you raised a child in the early 2000s you may be hearing the enthusiastic proclamation from the popular animated children’s series Bob the Builder echoing in your ears at this very moment. The series featured Bob, the resident builder, his partners, and a fleet of talking yellow iron. Bob the Builder was my daughter’s favorite show – her favorite character was Scoop, a backhoe loader, or an “I-Dig-Dirt,” as she called it. As a descendant of a proud line of craft laborers including legacy carpenters, crane operators, and yes, even a large backhoe operator, I entertained the thought that maybe, just maybe, my daughter might land in the construction industry, spurred by her admiration of the determined and optimistic Bob and his talking fleet of yellow iron.

Topics: Craft Labor, Design-Build, Education, Flatiron.

Key Factors for a Successful Construction Management at-Risk (CMAR) Project: A Contractor’s Perspective

Posted on September 28, 2018 by Mike Carpenter, PE, Project Manager, Rice Lake Construction Group

Rice Lake Construction Group, in conjunction with AE2S Engineering and the City of Watford City, successfully completed the first construction management at-risk delivery of a municipal wastewater treatment facility project in North Dakota. Below are a few items that made the project a success and a few that could have made the process better.

Topics: Best Practices, CMAR, Rice Lake.

Design-Build Delivery Achieves Chronic Grit Accumulation Relief at Georgia’s Largest Wastewater Facility

Posted on September 7, 2018 by Gus Hrncir, DBIA, National IPD Sales Services Manager, Brown and Caldwell

To solve a chronic grit-removal issue plaguing the 240 MGD RM Clayton Water Reclamation Center (WRC), Georgia’s largest wastewater treatment plant, the City of Atlanta Department of Watershed Management (City) required urgent upgrades to the headworks facility involving complete replacement of coarse screening and grit removal systems and installation of new influent flow-monitoring equipment.

Topics: Brown and Caldwell, Fixed-Price Design-Build, Wastewater Infrastructure/Treatment.

Is Hiring a CMAR at the 30% Design Milestone Really a Best Practice? The Impact Timing has on Project Success

Posted on August 31, 2018 by Chris Anvik, McCarthy Building Companies

Being on a CMAR project is like being part of an Olympic 4 x 100 relay team. Similar to the way the countries select the fastest runners for their Olympic relay teams; as an owner you select the best design and construction teams in the industry for your project. But having the fastest runners or the best CMAR and design teams isn’t enough. All the relay runners must come together as a cohesive team and the most critical aspect of any relay race is the transition between runners. Runners must be in lock step; they must be able to adapt to each other’s speed, excitement, and timing to move the relay baton through each leg of the relay and win the race. The same holds true for a CMAR project team. As a project moves from conceptual design, detail design, construction, and finally start-up and commissioning, each handoff of the project baton must be seamless. What would happen if you waited to find your third and fourth runners until after the race had started? Undoubtedly, that would put your relay team at a major disadvantage.

Topics: CMAR, McCarthy, Water Design-Build Project.

Does Collaborative Delivery Cost More?

Posted on August 17, 2018 by Mark E. Alpert, PE, DBIA, WDBC Executive Director

For owners considering collaborative-delivery approaches for water and wastewater projects, such as progressive design-build (PDB) or construction management at-risk (CMAR), one of the biggest impediments to acceptance is the perception that the final cost of the project would be larger than a traditional design-bid-build and cannot be controlled. Based on our research, there are two primary reasons this stumbling block exists. One relates to the owner’s belief that their initial cost estimates are correct and that the project can be designed and constructed within their budget. A second, and perhaps more important issue, is that many owners still do not understand how the collaborative process evolves and how to reach a final acceptable price on the project, primarily because they are only familiar with the design-bid-build pricing process that uses the low-bid approach.

Topics: Collaborative Delivery, Design-Build, WDBC Admin.

What Decisions are Needed to Prepare Your Organization to Use Design-Build Delivery?

Posted on August 10, 2018 by Linda Hanifin Bonner, Ph.D, Executive Operations Manager of Water Design-Build Council

The questions most often raised by utilities or agencies who want to pursue design-build delivery for their pending project range from “What are the decisions I need to make in the procurement process?” to “How do I prepare my organization to make the right decisions about the best collaborative delivery approach for my project?” Answers to these questions, which were addressed recently in an education session with a large metropolitan utility, also provide the opportunity for us to share the results of WDBC’s 2017 research on what public officials say they have learned from pursuing a design-build project.

Topics: Design-Build, Education, WDBC Admin.

How Collaboration in a CMAR Project Successfully Delivered a Treatment Plant Expansion at UTRWD’s Riverbend Water Reclamation Plant

Posted on July 28, 2018 by Sam Barraco, PE, Project Manager, Carollo

Upper Trinity Regional Water District’s (UTRWD) Riverbend Water Reclamation Plant (WRP), located in north central Texas near the city of Aubrey, needed to increase its capacity from 2 million gallons per day (mgd) annual average daily flow to 4 mgd with a peak flow rate of 16 mgd. This expansion was required to keep up with the economic growth occurring to the north of the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex. In order to increase capacity, a new influent pump station, new screening and grit removal headworks, a new sludge pump station building, modification of sequential batch reactor basins to conventional aeration basins with ballasted activated sludge, and new secondary clarifiers were required.

Topics: Carollo, CMAR, Wastewater Infrastructure/Treatment.

What’s Open-Book Pricing All About – How Does it Really Work?

Posted on June 30, 2018 by Leofwin Clark, Vice President, Brown and Caldwell

(Excerpted from the Water and Wastewater Design-Build Handbook, 4th edition, and Education Program) Several of our industry’s best collaborative-delivery methods—particularly CMA R and progressive design-build—rely on an open-book process for developing cost and pricing during preconstruction. This process is used to achieve agreement on cost and then a price for the construction effort to proceed. In turn, the price is typically implemented either as a guaranteed maximum price (GMP) or a fixed-price contract provision.

Topics: Brown and Caldwell, Collaborative Delivery, Open-Book Pricing, Progressive Design-Build.

How An Operations-Focused Collaborative-Delivery Method Leads To A Successful Project

Posted on June 22, 2018 by John Gallegos and Tom Visosky, CDM Smith

The success of collaborative-delivery methods, especially progressive design-build, is due in large part to the immediate engagement of an owner’s operation and maintenance (O&M) teams— specifically during design development and preconstruction. While this approach may appear difficult to execute, it’s actually quite simple when completed systematically.

Topics: CDM Smith, Collaborative Delivery, O&M.

Allowances Versus Contingencies: What’s the Difference?

Posted on June 15, 2018 by Ken Slota, Construction Manager, PCL Construction

Allowances and contingencies are often confused with one another, but understanding their differences is crucial to successfully executing project contracts.

Topics: Allowances, Contingency, PCL.

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