Progressive Project Delivery Capturing Water Business
To test how far the water and wastewater market has evolved in accepting different project delivery methods, my firm conducted a comprehensive survey of water and wastewater utility executives across the country. The goal of the independent study is to understand what owners really want when it comes to completing water/wastewater capital projects.
The obvious conclusion of the R. W. Beck survey is that the use of progressive project delivery methods for water and wastewater utility capital projects is here to stay. The study shows that more than 54% of the nation’s major water/wastewater utilities have now tried alternatives to the traditional design-bid-build method. Remarkably, 96% of those utilities, large and small, that have used a progressive project delivery method, such as design-build or construction management at-risk, would do it again. A significant majority of survey respondents (85%) agree that the use of progressive project delivery methods will stay the same or increase in the future. Clearly, this level of endorsement from a broad cross-section of water and wastewater utility managers underlines a continuing upward trend of routine use of non-traditional project delivery methods among the nation’s water and wastewater utilities.