The L.A. County Department of Public Works was in a constant battle with its contractors, until they moved from the standard "design, bid, construct" to a "design-build" model.
Jacob Williams, assistant director of the L.A. County Department of Public Works, explains what a significant shift in thinking design-build has been for implementing county capital projects:
"The problem that we began to understand was our relationship with the key provider-the contractor. That relationship was strained, very adversarial, very negative, and fraught with delays and overages in budget. If you look at how that relationship emerges, it's called bid day. On bid day, for about an hour, general contractors line the halls, making phone calls so they can submit a bid at the last minute from random subcontractors all across town for giving them their last and final price a few minutes before midday. That's why general contractors refer to bids as a "wild-ass guess." There isn't a relationship there when we select using low-bid, and that's part of the problem. It's just-who is the cheapest?"
FULL STORY: Design-Build: the 'New, New Thing' in L.A. County—Wow!
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