The Human Side of Progressive Design-Build with Geoff Neumayr

In this episode of the Design-Build Delivers Podcast, we revisit Progressive Design-Build (PDB) with industry leader Geoff Neumayr, who recently retired as Chief Development Officer at San Francisco International Airport. Geoff shares his insights on how PDB –– and design-build broadly –– is driving meaningful change across the industry.

From the early days of PDB at SFO to its current role in modernizing infrastructure, Geoff dives deep into the human side of construction, emphasizing the importance of psychological safety, social engagement and purpose-driven projects. He also addresses common misconceptions about PDB, highlighting its strengths and challenges, and he takes a crack at predicting the future of design-build.

This episode goes beyond the technicalities of PDB, exploring how it impacts communities and the people who live and work in them. Whether you’re a seasoned professional or new to the concept, this conversation offers valuable perspectives on why PDB continues to be a hot topic in the industry.

Guest:

Geoff Neumayr, SE, DBIA
Chief Development Officer (retired), San Francisco International Airport 

Access all our free design-build resources and learn more about Design-Build Done Right® at dbia.org.

DBIA members are shaping the future, one successful collaboration at a time.

Transcript

August 2024 Podcast

Fri, Aug 30, 2024 10:28AM • 39:44

SUMMARY KEYWORDS

build, design, progressive, contract, project, delivers, happen, pdb, construction, occur, owner, driven, talked, hurricanes, conversation, building, jeff, psychological safety, team, industry

SPEAKERS

Erin Looney, Geoff Neumayr

00:00

Music.

The Big Deal with Progressive Design-Build

Erin Looney  00:10

Let's play a little guessing game. What is one topic that consistently ranks in dbia's top three for most attended, most read and most listened to? If you guessed progressive design build, you win this cheeky and completely imaginary round of applause for me. I know it's everything you've ever wanted. You can thank me when you see me at the DBIA Design Build Conference in Expo in Dallas, this November, registration is open, by the way, at dbia.org/conferences but back to business, progressive design build, or PDB, if you're saving a second, is kind of a big deal in this episode of the design build delivers podcast. We are chatting with one of the big deals in PDB himself, Jeff Neumeier. He is recently retired as Chief Development Officer at San Francisco International Airport. He was a big part there of pioneering the progressive design build model with a background as a structural engineer. Jeff has managed a number of successful projects at SFO from terminal renovations to industrial water treatment plants, all while championing the design build delivery method. Through his long standing involvement with DBIA, he served as the 2021, chair of the National Board of Directors, and still sits on the board today. I am Aaron Looney, and this is the design build delivers podcast brought to you by us CAD. Our conversation with Jeff was lively and lengthy, so be on the lookout for an upcoming bonus episode where we get a little more into the nuance of progressive design, build infrastructure and the humanity of conscientious construction. But first, let's rewind to 2018

Geoff Neumayr  01:49

we've been given the gift of design, build and permission, and we've gotten to do something entirely different that is actually not as I would, is not mentally stressful, physically exhausting, but not mentally stressful. And when you eliminate that process, and you start seeking exceptional instead of just, how am I going to get this done and get through the day, it really, really becomes a lot of fun. And we do pride ourselves on having a lot of fun and what we're doing.

Erin Looney  02:14

So Jeff's been here before he talked about PDB on the design build delivers podcast. But 2018 was deep breath six years ago, and a lot has changed. Well, not everything, but certainly enough that we thought it was high time to visit Jeff and PDB again. So Jeff to kick off. We know PDB is popular, but what is it? Let's just assume that there are new people listening. There are people who might need a refresher. And let's do a quick crasher, maybe a one minute rundown on what PDB is, and a one minute rundown on how it's different from two step Best Value procurement, other than being a nice, shorter name,

Geoff Neumayr  02:55

let's start off with the fact that both Best Value design, build and progressive start with the inherently the very same thing, the idea that there is a single source contract selecting the architect or design team and the builder at the same time. From the standpoint of how we get to the design into the construction, it varies a little bit in each case, and that's what I'll describe. But I still want to keep going back to the fact that it's still that team that you select as a single source is what drives this conversation of collaboration and integration. But they have different problems to solve, and they work on different things, and so there's no silver bullet. There's no better than or anything in all this. I'm going to start off with that, but there are differences. A criterias document is developed before the procurement process and is used as part of the procurement because a fixed price is established at the time of the award of the contract. And that is very different than progressive design build, where the criterias document, if you will, is established upfront after the award of the contract, and the selection is primarily based off of qualifications with some cost components, but not really anything related to the direct cost of construction or even design. And then from that point on, then the stakeholders are included as part of the development of that criteria, where their design build team is actually meeting with the very stakeholders. So we have an actual conversation. Then we proceed through the design, and as we go through the design, at various points, when we have alignment of scope, cost and schedule, we begin to work on the terms of the contract in regards to scope, cost and schedule and move forward, whereas in best value, it's your stakeholders don't have that really opportunity to really inform the actual design build team because they have not been selected. So that's the key difference of what happens in that kind of initial step. One is before, one is after. I think

Erin Looney  04:39

we can fudge on the time a little bit there, because that was a great explanation. And I don't know why I thought I was going to pigeonhole you into a total of two minutes or something so complicated or complex, but you did it, yeah,

Geoff Neumayr  04:52

and it really is quite simple. It's not a whole lot. Just think about where the price gets fixed and then moves that along, and it causes a different behavior to. For different needs, and so that's where you have to explore. Is what is important to you? Because sometimes, many times important to get that fixed price up front before you start. Sometimes making the effort that's required progressive design build is too much for a certain project. In developing a criteria document is an easier way to get there. Every project is different. They all serve a different purpose. It just depends upon what your needs are. In

The Evolution of an Industry

Erin Looney  05:21

our planning chat, you gave a really strong background slash history of construction in the US, as well as some powerful numbers like construction's percentage of our GDP, which is, I'll let you tell us what it is, yeah, but that really put into perspective how much of an impact more efficient collaborative delivery can have on things like the modernization of our infrastructure, the ability to meet the demands of affordable housing, sustainable buildings, safer structures, technologically advanced systems. Those are issues we'll visit more in this month's bonus content episode, but for now, can you share that context, that background and history with our listeners that you shared with me.

Geoff Neumayr  06:03

We hear a lot about the things that are difficult in our industry, how expensive construction is. We hear a lot about how there's delays on projects, things going over budget. We don't have the labor to do it. We need to do and there's all these conversations that trouble us along the way. Those are all true, and it is a problem, and it's an inefficiency problem that has grown over a 50 year period of time in the United States that was a result of a process of where, and particularly in the public sector, where the lowest price was always sought, which wasn't necessarily the best people, nor did it ever imply that your designers and Your builders have ever had a conversation, and so there's misaligned expectations that occurred, which led to what we I sometimes refer to as design and construction by combat, which leads to miscommunication. But the idea of design bill bringing us together tries to solve those very problems I was talking about, and it's driven by the fact that we're looking to optimize the resources we have that includes the dollars and the time and includes the people that are going to interact with us. And there are numerous studies out there, and actually tangible results that have occurred on projects where we can see anywhere from 20 to 30% less money going into our projects and actually using less labor, because we're not wasting the resources, important resources of our labor force that's out there. That means we can do more for less. Oh, but also it gives us the opportunity to do better for less, and that's really powerful. The fact of the matter is, and you talked about the GDP, that if you look at the cost of a project, and not only just look at the cost to build it, but operate and maintain it over a 5060, year period of time. There is no other industry that has a bigger impact on our economy, not only from what we directly do, but indirectly. Just think of schools that get cut corners for people that then we could have created a bedroom educational experience. So think of the results, the impact of what that can have, or, for example, even the living conditions of people so that they can work close to their communities and have their families and things that get left out because we couldn't build that extra piece of road that we wanted, or that extra station, maybe in a train. All these things play into where we got to do more for the public we serve, and we have a responsibility in this industry to deliver and the last thing I will add to this too is that it's important that people do make money in our industry too. We cannot have folks that are having to worry about their business going under or causing to shed the blame onto somebody because of something they couldn't foresee, because there was never a conversation that was allowed to occur. And that's important, because if we don't make it that way, then we're not going to have the best people on our industry. We if we can increase people's wages by doing things better, that's just a win win all the way around, because we bring talented people into this, we make things work, and it won't cost owners any more money. It'll cost the public a lot less. Everybody is better for that whole cause. So if we drive that all together, design build aims at trying to solve a lot of these problems by bringing an entire teams together in a collaborative and integrated way more so than any other project delivery, because of the very nature of a contract strategy, whether it be best value or progressive design build.

Erin Looney  09:10

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People at the Heart of PDB

Erin Looney  09:46

so now that we've got this baseline for what we're going to talk about for the rest of this episode, talk to me about the overall importance of having delivery methods available in infrastructure projects, especially progressive design build. Since that is our focus,

Geoff Neumayr  09:59

I. We are in a pivotal point in our country where we talked and alluded to some of the things affordable housing. Well, you know, one of the most effective ways to make housing more affordable is to do it for less. Simple enough, right? But we have other problems where people can't even get clean water. And we can solve this. We can solve those problems. We know how to do it. We just have to get the resource and the ability to do it to be more efficient. More importantly, we're at also pivotal point in this country where we built a lot of our infrastructure, 50, 6070, years ago, and we see it starting to fail. And so this is Further compounding the amount of work we have to do. Then you compound that with the issues of climate change and the fact that we have to really begin to really look at high performing buildings that can serve us well into the next 75 years. And, you know, some people will say sustainability actually should cost us more. I think it should actually cost us less and achieve more efficiency that only happens when we put the people together. We need to build this entire social engagement structure of a project where we understand everybody and treat everybody like human beings, and have these conversations a long way back our previous director, John Martin, having read a book Getting to Yes, one of the quotes I'll never forget in there was we have to learn to be soft on people, hard on the problem. That's what design build allows creating that environment where people actually can be kind to each other, can be good to each other, to allow these tough conversations to occur, but we have to do in an environment where we all can collectively do it together, because together, we're better and progressive. Design Build creates that environment of psychological safety. There is a budget and there is a time frame, but it's not in a form of a contract yet. I think that's really important, that we bring that, that humanity back to what we're talking about, because we are motivated by doing great things. We will do great things when we're given the environment to do it. We have some tough problems to address in this country over the next 50 years. We can do it. We can do it, and we're seeing the results of it through the amazing projects that we see coming out of our constituents that are all members of DBIA

Building with Purpose

Erin Looney  12:01

and the project and team awards from DBIA, in fact, 2024 merit award winners just got their notifications, so you'll see those starting to come out. And it's going to be really exciting to see some of what you're talking about in action. And so what we're going to spend a lot of time on today is the more intangible impact of progressive design build like the idea that real people are involved at every step of the way, that there's a need for psychological safety, the importance of social engagement and delivering purpose driven projects. Now nothing on this show is about me, but I do think these things are just so fascinating about this work, because from the outside, when I thought of architecture, engineering and construction, I would not have thought psychological safety, and so it's been really eye opening to get into the line of work I'm in now and realize just how much emphasis we put on the human experience for both the teams that create the infrastructure and the people who use it. So the question here is, what does it mean to say a building project emphasizes humanity.

Geoff Neumayr  13:03

Yeah, why do we build in the first place? There has to be a reason there. And when you break that away and keep peeling that onion back, you're going to get there to some human aspect of what it's going to be. You keep asking that question, but why? But why? But why? And quite frankly, the built environment has been with this world from day number one with mankind, because we need it. We need it for our quality of life. We need it for sleep. We need it for education, health, every aspect water and so what we're doing is that purpose is in a big high level, is for humanity. These aren't just statues. They are fully functioning, not just buildings, but infrastructure, rail, getting people back and forth safely to work, back to home, ballparks for people to play, in parks for people to play and kids can enjoy themselves, entertainment, all these things happen in what we build, and the better we do, the better that experience occurs. And so I truly believe that what we do in our profession is deliver experiences to people. The reason why I've always liked to focus on that is because when people feel that aspiration, it kind of feels good. It makes you want to get up in the morning and go do something whenever we practice random acts of kindness for people. Does anybody really feel really, really bad after they did that? I like not. I feel really good, right? It's like it's inherent in our DNA for the most part, right? It's what we want to do, but we have to look at the things that could shake that environment a little bit. And to me, what shakes those environments is when we become afraid. That fear builds in where somebody might hurt me, somebody might do something to me that I could get in trouble for. That's where that psychological, safe environment comes in, where if we're going to ask people to work towards a purpose that they understand, that they do as a team, that they're bound by, not necessarily contractually, but in their hearts, it's. And that's what progressive design build aims to do, is to create a little bit of that relationship so that we can focus on that purpose. Yes, we've got to get to budget and yes, we got to get to the schedule. We're going to have a conversation about what we want to do and aspire to do great things. Case in point, I go back to our latest two terminal buildings, one, boarding area B and terminal one back at SFO roughly a billion dollars. There were two separate design build contracts. Both the teams worked together through that entire project. But one of the key things in there is they were only required to be LEED Gold, but they wanted to be lead platinum under a new version four, which has never been done in the entire world, never done. They didn't have to do it. They weren't given more money for it. They figured out what they had and how they can do it. Guess what? Back to back, both projects did it. It wasn't the power of a contract requirement that drove it to a better place. It was the power of a purpose. Yes, there's always a contract. I'm not foolish enough to think there's not, there has to be a contract, but there's nothing in the rule book that says we can't play above the bare minimums of the contract and shoot for a higher place. Just think about that environment where you know you're working above the rates, kind of like being in a race and realizing, you know, I've been in a long term but I've got a whole lap lead. You can choose to go faster, but you're still probably going to set a good record. It unleashes people, and it hinges people from the fear of the contractual requirements which are there to a purpose. We're not dismissing the contract because things can still go wrong. They're out of the control of everybody else, and we want the contract there to be that safety net in the event that happens. I'll use an example of we way back in time on a progressive design build project, two of them back to back. One had water damage that damaged the other one that occurred because of a mistake that was made, but because there was a contract structure in place about builders risk that talked about how it got all resolved. It was actually resolved in such a way that nobody ever started pointing fingers between projects. Might have been a little bit of stress on the insurance companies to have to go through that, and yes, there was some legal things, but that's what the contract did for us. It protected the team and got us all through. And by the way, both those projects were hugely successful, but because they had purpose, they had that protection of a good contract, they were able to get back to a higher place.

The Case for Psychological Safety

Erin Looney  17:18

And now I'm going to push at you a little because my first response, and it's not because I disagree, it just is, what is the importance of delivering projects that don't lose sight of humanity? So what? Why should we care about that? Who cares about the people who put them there and the people who are going to use them? I don't feel that way, just to be clear.

Geoff Neumayr  17:35

Good question. Why do we care? What if everybody thought that way. What if that was an industry that was driven by I don't care. That means nobody would get anything. So you're going to have traffic jams that take you three hours to get to work, or you can't even get there at all. You're going to be in horrible schools that are just not well maintained and have no ability to do it because nobody cared. The other reason why we care, let's define a little bit about being a leader. A lot of people think about leader in the now, I think in our industry, we are delivering something for future that we don't even know who or what it could be you. So I care what about the buildings, particularly here in the west coast, where your family could be in something that somebody else is building. Don't you want them to care about the seismic safety your family might be in that you want everybody to do things right. You want to design right. You want it built right. We do care. We want it done better. All these impacts are important. So whatever we do today on a particular project probably is going to impact the life of somebody you will never know. It might not even be born yet, and they could be somewhere else in the world. We don't even know where they're at miles away. That's why we care.

Erin Looney  18:46

Putting that in perspective, I went to a university that was still growing, and they did a very good job of building around us while it was still usable, and I think it was a relatively decent model for how not to disrupt everything. But then it also got me thinking about growing up in the southeast and in Florida, where hurricanes, you know, we don't worry about earthquakes there, but we worry about hurricanes and the storm surge. You come somewhere like DC, where that isn't a priority. To think about the hurricanes coming all the time, and if we get any threat, this whole place panics. Because I think that what you said about looking to the future really has to come into play, especially with sustainability and climate change, is that while hurricanes might not have been thought number one when a building was built in DC, they're moving up that list in the mid Atlantic. Now,

Geoff Neumayr  19:38

absolutely, it's interesting. And you bring this up, the sustainability is really about our carbon footprint and our impact on our environment. I think we're all very well versed in that area, but resiliency is a very interesting topic, because when we look for cost savings or scope reductions to get out of a problem only, we take the lowest bar out that satisfies it. But. Criteria, low bar. One of the things I foresee in our industry that we're beginning to take a better look at is the full life cycle, cost of a project. What happens after we complete construction? What about the next 50 years of operations and maintenance? Exactly what you talked about hurricane, seismic events and resiliency. What's the cost of something failing 10 years down the road and having so much damage has got to be completely rebuilt, where, if we just put 5% more in, or 10% more in, or better yet, figured out a better way that enhanced the performance of what we're going to do so that we could maintain our operations. And so I think that's incredibly important as we begin to realize that we have a responsibility today to actually do better, not only for just meeting their minimum standards today, but going further. And we see this playing out more and more in design build, because one of the things we're seeing we talk a lot in our educational classes about is moving away from just prescriptive requirements as owners, we're encouraging people to move towards performance. Typically, we have become accustomed to delivering projects with specifications, things based off of absolutes that are required by code or by policy that is usually driven primarily by safety, immediate safety, of events that occur, whether it be fire seismic, but it doesn't take care of necessarily what happens after? What happens if you have a building that meets all those safety requirements, everybody's out good, but it's completely destroyed. What about the next six months? We not only want everybody get out safe, we actually want to minimize the damage that can be done. Now we got to rethink a whole different way of what is that and where is that point in terms of how much we invest upfront to minimize what happens at the back end, so that when something bad does happen, that we can't actually predict the timing of it, we have a fighting chance to get back in operation fairly quickly. And like you said, it's not just for me at a lot of seismic out here, but everybody has a potential, from tornadoes to flooding to all these things that can happen to us, but they can also be other things, such as, you know, even financial downturns, you know, things that affect us. From an economic perspective, there's only one delivery system I know that can get through that, and that's design build and that's progressive design build on steroids is because it's purpose driven. When you allow this collective wisdom, this relationship to occur, we can do great things. That is another power of progressive design build is it really allows us to achieve more than we thought way were possible.

Why Progressive Design-Build Works

Erin Looney  22:28

So tell me this now, what is so special about progressive design build, in light of what we've discussed so far today, and in light of the fact it is such a hot button topic,

Geoff Neumayr  22:39

what is so special? Let's start off what it's not. Progressive design build is not a silver bullet, and it actually is worrisome to me. When people think it is, there's a lot of steps that have to be in play before it can be successful. Progressive design build, done wrong can actually be not so special as true with Best Value design build. And what is special, though, about progressive design build when done right and people invoke our best practices, and this is true best value. So it's hard for me to kind of separate these two things. But what's unique about progressive design build that makes it special is that as we move towards these higher performance based type contracts, where it really takes time for our stakeholders to have a conversation about what that purpose is, and communicate it effectively to an entire team and develop this social engagement of collective wisdom driven by a purpose that can be very special to solve incredibly difficult problems. It also speeds up the conversation because you only go through cycles one time. You don't have to refigure it out. The other thing too, that's very special about progressive design build is that the procurement process is a very short time frame. You don't have to develop a lot of documents up front to procure a design build team. I think about the recent bridge collapse in Baltimore, where they are going to progress design build, and they're already seeking in that procurement process rolling. They're not going to have to take whole bunch of time to develop a very complex project where they probably have existing foundations. They're going to have to work around and probably try to figure out how to salvage certain things and make it work and get it done. And they're in a race against time. The other thing too, that's really special about progressive design build is it really does allow you to start a lot of work before design is completed. Because there are many things that we can get enough work done to start on the ground. So for example, in a building, once you know fairly well where your building is going to sit, what it's going to look like, you can actually start clearing the site, probably you can start doing these things. It helps you get through that pretty, pretty quickly. So not only are you saving the time on the procurement process, but it allows you to work in that trusting environment. So I call it fast tracking. It allows you to work through those things selectively so that you can actually improve the schedule significantly. You can still do that in best value. As well, but it's a little bit different, because a lot of that is predetermined before you've got to the validation phase, where progressive you can work together with owner. Because many times on these complex projects where there's a lot of operational constraints that are changing even as you go through it day to day, it allows you to flex with that kind of adjustment of things and still optimize what you're doing given the fact that you've got change in condition here and changing condition here, it's hard to do when you got changing conditions and this one's fixed in a contract already, you can kind of work it together as you go through that is very special about progressive design build. A couple

Facing the Critics

Erin Looney  25:33

months ago, we interviewed Tom Foley, also a DBIA board member and the director of the New York City Department of Design and Construction. Claire, on the other side of the country from you, that interview is available on the design build. Delivers blog@dbia.org and Tom said repeatedly the phrase better, faster, cheaper. And while we understand, after a little while in this business, what that actually means, it could be difficult to get someone on board, to get them to jump in the boat with us when the terms faster and cheaper, maybe not so much better, but faster and cheaper sometimes sound a little like the things you'd say to try to smooth over just cheapness, they sort of sound like a shortcut. So that's just to set the stage for the nothing is perfect portion of the episode. I'm sure you've run into some objections. What are some common objections to progressive design, build, and how do you address that pushback?

Geoff Neumayr  26:26

Good question. Let's go back to better, faster, cheaper. That's the outcome we want. That doesn't say we're going to do it. And maybe cheaper is not quite there. How about less expensive? We're not cutting corners, because remember, better still in there, right? So it's better and cheaper if I can have people only do things once, instead of having to go through and redesign work, or, worse than that, build something, tear it out and have to put it back. I didn't spend three bucks. Only spend $1 it gives me two more dollars to spend. That's going to be a whole of a lot faster, therefore better, faster, cheaper. Now the issue to progress design build and say, let's call it the cons here of it, and there are, although it's this, the environment is getting different from a legislation perspective, that is still a tricky point in making that happen, because that's the first enabler. Is that, particularly in the public sector, maybe not necessarily in the private sector, is I can't even do it. So that's first obstacle can get in the way is that you're just not capable. Best Value, for the most part, across the country is pretty universally accepted right now, but we've seen significant inroads made to progressive even at the federal level, so we're seeing that. So yay. The second part of this is it's not about all of us anymore that are involved in our industry, up from the outside world. They still see our business as a commodity. So when we start talking about soft skills and performance, that's a tougher conversation to start to have, because it takes a little bit longer to explain. Because, you know what, if I get the lowest price, it's got to be better. So the whole idea that you're going to hire the best design build team from a qualification perspective, and we're going to start design on something that's going to cost $500 million but you don't know it for sure yet in the contract, take some explaining to do, and so we've got to carefully construct that conversation and change the notion that this is a commodity, that the cheapest is the best, go back into what Tom said. It's not just about the cheapest. It's about better and faster and cheaper. We need to better explain what has happened in our industry over the years. There are all sorts of curves out there about labor productivity has fallen since 1950s we also know that if labor production goes down, the total cost of production goes down. Because, yeah, we can still produce materials as fast as we can, but if they're wrong, we got to recut them and rebuild them. So that's making even the material fabrication a problem. So everything becomes a problem when we have labor inefficiencies. Another negative of progressive design build is it is not a hands off sport owners. They have to realize that you're going to be have to be heavily involved. If you come in with a bureaucratic process where you're just going to staff up and kind of just push paper and build up large teams who aren't willing to get the fingernails dirty and be part of the solution. It can get enormously expensive at that point. You have to come in and realize, Hey, I gotta push decisions to make this work. If you're gonna get better, faster, cheaper, you might still get better, but you're probably gonna get better, faster, more expensive. And so there is that risk. There that balancing point of that and just making decisions to get all three is critically important, and that means full engagement. It means you gotta be in tune with real life situations that are going on. You can't be asking the question of how we do on schedule two months after the fact, when it's already slipped on schedule. So it's really a really hands on. You have to stay in tune constantly. It's exhausting at times, and it can really weigh on stakeholders. The great news about progressive design build is our stakeholders are with us the whole way you. The bad news is they're with us the whole way too. It's going to take a lot of their time, and most of our stakeholders have day jobs, if you will, not the project job. The other thing too, to really take into consideration about what delivery system you use, I tend to, in its personal opinion, was of a philosophy that the more complicated something get, that's where progressive design build should fit, because that's where the attention is needed. Certain things can be better prescribed, particularly maintenance type projects where it's really super pretty clear. You know, it's not perfect, but it's a whole lot clearer, versus very complex projects. When you get into complicated sites like a hospital or health center or something like that, I guess the last part of this is that in progress design bill. Some people still think of the GMP as a they set it, but then owners immediately start thinking about savings, what they're not going to spend. And that is a bad habit to have think of the GMP as a lump sum. That's your promise. I will pay you up to this amount to get this done. And don't start looking for those savings, or counting every penny that's being spent, because then the tension of the design build team goes away from actually solving the problem to protecting themselves, and you end up with the result of, you're going to hit the cap and there's going to be no savings. You have to let your design build teams go do what they do and only worry about that, not worrying about an ulterior motive of you as an owner coming in to impact them. Let them design, let them build you.

Contracting for Success

Erin Looney  31:23

You said something earlier that has been sticking in my head throughout this whole episode, so I'm gonna gonna address it now you you said you're going to get the behavior you contract for. Can you unpack that for us? Hmm.

Geoff Neumayr  31:37

So what I really mean by that is, in order to get that price, you have to develop a set of contract documents for them to price, because that's the law, the contract is going to be exactly what you've done, and there's a price attached to it. And we know those drawings are going to have errors and omission in them. To some degree, conceivably, it could be 0% but it can be more than that. It's just going to happen because of standard of care. That is the responsibility of the design team, which the owner then inherits as part of getting a price, whether it be design bid, build or design bill, because the criteria document still somewhat at risk. You know, you can't just go back and say, Oh, we missed any criterias. Document really meant this, or you should have known. And so what happens then is that if price becomes the major component of what you want, then that's what people are going to all protect. And if that's what they're all protecting is how much money they're going to make versus the owner of how much money they're going to spend. You now have a conflict. Rather, if your contract says, Hey, we're going to drive a purpose first, we're going to give a budget and we're going to have a time frame. But before we put those into a contract, we're going to say, Hey, how can we do it better, faster, cheaper? Now you can have a conversation where people are being kind to each other, soft on each other, and hard on the problem. That's what I mean by that. That's why you get the behavior you contract for. And so even a progressive design bill, be careful to not get into those where you encourage a perverse behavior you don't really want because you're afraid of the risk. Make it so that the risk is fair.

The Future of Infrastructure with PDB

Erin Looney  33:10

So lastly, in another common theme of the design, build delivers podcast. It's time for us to climb into our time machine, fire up the TARDIS, read our cards, look into our crystal ball your your choice of metaphor for speculate wildly. So what does the future look like for infrastructure if the industry continues to embrace progressive design build?

Geoff Neumayr  33:30

Oh, that's just such a great question I'm going to go back to and I know I've kind of focused a little bit on the full life cycle of a project, and where I see progressive design build going is to go beyond just the delivery of the project, because I've talked about what we have seen in progress design build is a greater use of technology, for example, Building Information Modeling, and we're seeing handovers of actual digital models and things that are occurring for the end users to use for the operation and maintenance side of things. One of the things, though, in these high performing buildings that we're beginning to see is that they require constant tinkering and maintenance over a long period of time, as complicated progress design bills, typically, there's the contract comes to an end pretty close to, actually, when the project is completed. But possibly what we might be getting to see is a greater long term ownership of that contract. I'm going to use the term loosely here, public private partnership, but not necessarily an equity based one. It could be that you bring on and allow certain trades to maintain a longer term arrangement through some contracting mechanism, through that where they actually, effectively, for a term, 1015, years, will be responsible for the operations and maintenance to meet a constant performance criteria, and why do I see that it's so important is that our systems have become so specialized in what we do. How can an individual owner create a workforce that can understand 1000 different things when each one of those 1000 knows specifically their one thing, and so we don't know which one of those we're going to get. So how do you prepare. For that, I see progressive design build as being a real opportunity for us to develop these longer relationships beyond seeing design build, not just the build, but the O and M side. We've referred to those as design build, operate and maintains. We've seen those even in Best Value design build. We've used those at the airport, for example, on our train systems. They've been quite effective over the years. I think back in the day, the air train, which was actually a design, build, operate, maintain, still exists today. Here we are, almost 25 years later, and it still works and it's still the same company. I see more of that coming even at a deeper level, down to HVAC systems, or we've got Dynamic Glass monitoring or even water filtration systems in plants. We're starting to talk about things like heat recovery central utility plants that are going to be constantly tinkered with, that there's just so much that's required to maintain those projects over the life cycle of the project. So I see that really occurring in progress design build. And I think the last thing that I see that future of progressive design build is a more unity of the process of managing progressive design build right now, I see it somewhat diversified, mainly because a lot of people are doing it for the very first time, and there's not a whole lot of information. I know I experienced that 15 years ago, and I think we're kind of in that space a little bit right now. We'll see that process become more uniform and progressive. There's still a lot of different one offs of things going on and nobody's fault. It's just we're trying to all try to learn together. So I think we'll see more of a unification of that each owner gets the benefit of other owners. You know, collectively, this whole thing working together, and our builders also understand too, what has to work. And I think we'll just see that coalesce better together between the entire community, because we're still all kind of like feeling it out a little bit. I know our efficiencies are going to go up and our production curves are going to go up in we've seen that begin to happen during covid. We saw some anomalies occur, but we do see it happen. And I know it's happening because one of the things that I saw in our project Awards last time is the word Lee platinum kept coming up five years ago. You never heard that. If you look at projects that are achieving these lofty performance goals, guess what's behind it? Progressive, design build, for sure, design build. And

Keep the Momentum Going

Erin Looney  37:14

so what about if we just ignore this? What if the momentum stops tomorrow?

Geoff Neumayr  37:18

Oh, well, I don't think it's going to happen. I think there's just too much going on right now. You know, one of the things that I love about the design builds Institute of America is we are no longer the little engineer Chuck. We are the big engine pulling a long train across this country from one corner to the other, made up of a very passionate people who are driven by purpose. We see this constantly about people, you know, the amount of time from their day jobs, volunteering their time for legislative practices and things. But we're also getting the attention of policy at a political level, that people are just seeing the benefits of it. I just cannot, in my mind, see that happen. It's just on exponential growth right now. And so if you're on exponential growth. The only thing is just feed the engine and keep going. The only way could go back, the other ways, if we stop. So with that, you know, it's really about educating our younger generation too, sometimes even reminding them of the way it was. We have that responsibility to drive it through and make it happen. So I guess I'm very optimistic person, because I believe people want good things to happen, and when we enable good things to happen, good stuff happens,

Erin Looney  38:26

and that's what we all presumably want good stuff, right? Thank you to Jeff for reminding us why design build and progressive design build isn't just a process, it's a movement towards something greater we've explored a lot today, from the intricacies of PDB to its broader impact on our world and the people in it. Stay tuned for our bonus episode where we'll climb even deeper into Jeff's insights and to help you guide your own progressive design build efforts, visit the DBIA bookstore@store.dbia.org to download the progressive design build deeper dive and find more resources on PDB and design build best practices, and of course, join us in Dallas, not to thank me for applause, but because we'll miss you. If you miss the DBIA Design Build Conference and Expo this November, you can register at dbia.org/conferences I am Aaron Looney, and this has been the design build delivers podcast. Thank you to our guest, Jeff Neumeyer, producer, editor, Fred Yi you for listening and our sponsor, us, CAD, learn more at uscad.com/dbia,