ForConstructionPros.com

The Ajax asphalt paving contract portion of the project amounts to $69 million of the $430 million contract, according to Felipe Jaramillo, the joint venture’s Project Control Manager. The team is seeking permits from various governing agencies and will be assigning 50 or so crew and management staff for the project, which is a design-build job.

“In a design-build job,” Jaramillo says, “construction and the design go hand in hand; the job is literally being built while it’s being designed. The contractor has to bid the project without complete plans. The prospective bidders have to hypothesize how this job is going to look and work hand in hand with their designer.”

This differs from the conventional “design-bid-build” model, where the whole job is designed and permit issues are worked out and put on blueprints and plan sheets, with the contractor then looking at a complete design - all before construction begins.

“The idea behind design-build is that the project is expedited because the designer and contractor are motivated to be efficient, since they are constructing their own design,” says Dave Reid, general manager of Business Development for Ajax.

Conversely, he says, “Under design-bid-build, the contractor may find many things in the design which need to be changed. With design-build, the impetus is on him to avoid this situation by presenting the design in the most constructable manner.”