Best Value: University’s System Boosts Value Added
“The [common] construction industry model is all wrong because you need to buy construction as a best value, not as a commodity. When that happens, skill levels will again become important and quality will improve,” says Dean T. Kashiwagi, director of the Performance Based Studies Research Group at ASU’s Del E. Webb School of Construction. “We need to change behavior in order to get a better product. If we minimize the information flow, people will become accountable. And where you have a lot of management, it means inefficiency because technical competency minimizes management.”
PBSRG studied time, budget and satisfaction complaints associated primarily with design-bid-build project delivery and the persistence of nonperformance problems even when partnering, continuous improvement and long-term alliances were involved. It determined that many owners still operate in a price-based commodity environment driven by minimum requirements, which drives high-risk, adversarial relationships and the need for more management.