...from many contractors when we ask them about procedures to show efficiencies," he says. "We’ve seen significant improvements in productivity over the past 20 years from the design side, but not so much from the contractor side," says G. Wayne Burchette, director of worldwide engineering and construction for Eastman Chemical Co.

For new product launches, speed of delivery takes a priority for pharmaceutical companies. "We often have to commit significant capital for products while they still are in the approval process," Sturgeon says. Once the final Food and Drug Administration approval is granted, it becomes a race to the market.

To address the need for speed, there is an increasing reliance on prefabrication. "We are using more modular designs, either using modules or skids," says Sturgeon. A module is a fully assembled and certified piece of process equipment, while a skid is portion of a process that is assembled remotely. Sturgeon says Abbott Laboratories is using them in Puerto Rico because Abbott, Eli Lilly and Amgen are building plants there. "There just aren’t enough skilled craft workers to handle all three plants, so we have the skids and modules assembled here in the U.S. for installation there," he says.

Expediting projects also is turning more owners away from traditional design-bid-build. "It’s a formula for despair," says Disney’s Holm. "It will soon become the exception, not the rule, for converting capital faster."

One key development is a joint-venture agreement in July between two large owner groups, the Construction Users Roundtable, Cincinnati, and the Austin, Texas-based Construction Industry Institute. "CURT doesn’t do its own research, while CII does," says Sturgeon, chairman of the latter group. "The joint venture will help both groups mesh our agendas and help develop areas of mutual interest for research."

Safety is one issue that major owners continue to demand from the construction industry. "Architects and engineers design, contractors build, but we still answer .to the shareholders and the media if something goes wrong on a project," says Robert S. Krzywicki, practice manager for contractor safety at DuPont. "So contractors that pay attention to safety are the only ones we will deal with."

Most of the major owners that are members of CURT have adopted a zero-accident policy for their projects, says Krzywicki. CURT now is developing a blueprint for...