Construction Management Fundamentals - Part 2 of 4

Explore how project delivery systems allocate risk and coordinate owners, architects, engineers, and contractors for bridge projects, from site assessment to contracts and compliance.

Explain design-bid-build, the traditional delivery with the owner, design team, and the lowest responsive bidder. Highlight how public bids, 100% designs, and a linear construction timeline define this approach.

Explore design-build, where the owner hires a design-builder that combines design and construction under one roof, often enabling early construction and fast tracking while managing risk.

Learn how the construction manager at risk delivers projects by engaging the contractor during design for constructability reviews, scheduling, and cost estimates, improving budget certainty and enabling fast-tracking.

Explore multiple prime delivery where the owner contracts the design team and subs, acting as the general contractor. Assess the risks, rewards, and fast-tracking potential for sophisticated owners or developers.

Integrated project delivery unites owner, design team, general contractor, and key subs under a multiparty contract to share savings and risks, promoting collaboration and efficiencies across design and build.

Discover how a construction manager advisor augments delivery systems like design bid built and design build, explaining CRM at risk, IPD, and the advisory role versus risk.

Compare major project delivery systems—design-bid-build, design-build, CM at risk, multiple prime, and integrated project delivery—and highlight their advantages, disadvantages, collaboration, and risk allocation.

Explore project delivery systems, including public-private partnerships, and how finance, design, build, operate, and maintain megaproject decisions. See a Denver-area example showing how owners evaluate delivery options in early planning.

Explore delivery systems for a half-million-square-foot medical school lab and office project, weighing design-build, design-bid-build, CM at risk, and IPD with constructability reviews and owner involvement.

Assess delivery systems for a cookie-cutter fast-food restaurant, considering geotech, soils, water table, climate, and codes. Choose design-build and bid to finish the design and start flipping burgers.

Address a publicly funded heavy civil road resurfacing and reconstruction project on a state highway facing extreme winter and phased construction to keep traffic moving. Choose design-build.

Explore delivering an innovative ethanol pilot plant via design build, balancing a fixed budget in a public, federal facility with evolving scope, owner involvement, and a one-stop shop for constructability.

Assess a land development project’s earthwork, utilities, pavement, and landscaping while comparing delivery systems like design-build, CM at risk, and multiple prime, including an owner's rep adviser.

Discover payment options for construction beyond lump sums, including early design involvement in design-build and CNMC, and how to pay contractors and the design team.

Choose a lump sum contract with a fixed price that covers all costs of work, general conditions and field overhead, contingency, fee and overhead, insurance, and bonds.

Explore cost plus fee contracts in design-build, including dollar-for-dollar cost reimbursement, fixed or percentage fees, GMP caps, and incentives that affect owner savings and contractor margins.

Compare lump-sum and cost-plus contracts on a $10 million project, detailing subcontracts, general conditions, supervisory labor, overhead, and GNP to illustrate reimbursements and margins.

Explore unit price bidding, from owner estimates to contractor unit prices, and how actual quantities adjust payment and margins.

Explains time and material contracts for short-term, ill-defined scopes, including verifying labor, equipment, hours, and materials, and outlines rates, overhead, and not-to-exceed pricing versus cost-plus.

Explain lump-sum and upfront rate-based reimbursements for the design team, covering producing drawings and specifications, construction administration, and project administration through to as-built drawings.

Lump-sum, cost-plus with fee, and unit price form the main contractor payment options, with cost-plus without a GMP used when the scope is ill defined.

Explore procurement options for construction projects, from low bid and A plus B to best value and qualifications-based approaches, and learn how price, schedule, and qualifications influence selection.

Explore procurement options from low bid to best value and qualifications-based selection, including design-build with rfq/rfp processes, and evaluation scoring for responsive, responsible bids.

Concludes part 2 by comparing payment and procurement options, and detailing cost estimating, contract types, and scheduling as core construction management skills.