Design and build procurement method in practice: key challenges and practice based enablers

Over the recent years the UK construction industry has seen an increasing level of interest in the use of design and build (D&B) as a construction procurement method. This appears to be mainly driven by an attempt by the industry to increase the level of integration in what is generally viewed as a fragmented industry. The main advantages associated with this procurement method that have been cited in reviewed literature have been numerous. Key advantages appear to be the following: single point responsibility for the whole project delivery encompassing design and construction, early contractor involvement resulting in potential cost savings and earlier completion, easy constructability and minimisation of design and construction risk to clients. Despite its perceived increase in adoption over the last decade as supported by the relatively recent Contracts in use survey in 2010 by the RICS, the construction industry is still experiencing problems associated with D&B procurement. This highlights the need to explore further how this procurement method is being used in practice. The exploration adopted in this research involves identification and evaluation of challenges encountered by key participants (clients, contractors and designers). In addition such an exploration is buttressed by the identification and evaluation of practice based enablers that key participants have used/proposed to use in order to manage better the challenges they have encountered with this procurement method. The nature of the problem investigated in this research is characteristically exploratory, fluid and flexible, data driven and context-sensitive. As a result a combination of in-depth review of related literature, semi-structured interviews and a questionnaire survey were used as main research techniques. The questionnaire survey was targeted at a wider and a different audience to the one used in semi-structured interviews. This approach was adopted in order to gain a holistic insight into this multi-faceted problem. The research shows that adopting D&B procurement method does not necessarily result in integration of design and construction processes. Significant time and effort will need to be spent in creating and facilitating integrative processes and systems to ensure that the gap between the theory and practice of D&B procurement is covered. D&B is not a one size fit all procurement method and each project characteristics and requirements needs to be methodically reviewed and understood to ensure that this fits with the unique features of D&B procurement method. The research implications mainly relate to the D&B procurement practice. Given the practice based enablers that it generates this has direct implications on how practitioners go about applying the processes and methods that facilitate integration of design and construction in a D&B procurement method set up. This, therefore, goes a long way to bridge the gap between the theory and practice of D&B procurement method. This potentially leads to unlocking this integrative procurement method’s benefits that were not previously realised. The output of this research is a framework for facilitating better integration of design and construction processes. Additionally the framework can also be used as a tool kit for effective use and for acting as an enabler for the flow and realization of potential benefits associated with D&B procurement method. It is expected that this framework will help in providing the much needed guidance to users (in particular infrequent/inexperienced users) of the D&B procurement method.