Owners� Push for Efficiency and Speed Gives Firms Access to New Markets
Design-build continues to be a major presence in the construction landscape, as more owners search for efficiencies in the construction process. For ENR’s Top 100 Design-Build Firms, 2007 was a big year. The group generated $83.44 billion in revenue in 2007, up 21.2% from 2006. Domestically, the revenue figure was $53.75 billion, an increase of 19.7% over 2006, while international work, much of it from giant engineer procure-construct jobs, rose to $29.68 billion, up 24.1%.
“The Sword of Damocles is not the acceptance of design-build, but the economy,” says Walker Lee Evey, CEO of the Design-Build Institute of America, Washington, D.C. “In general, we are beginning to see the impact of a slowdown.” He says most firms have a strong backlog and new projects have only just slowed down, not stopped.