by Brianna Crandall — July 30, 2014—The Design-Build Institute of America (DBIA) has released new research findings indicating that for the first time more than half of projects above $10 million are being completed through design-build project delivery. The newly released study confirms that the use of design-build has remained steady since its growth spurt at the end of the last decade, and also that Oregon and the military sector are leading, with the most dollars being spent on design-build projects.
DBIA, established in 1993 to promote best practices in design-build project delivery, defines design-build as an integrated approach that delivers design and construction services under one contract with a single point of responsibility. DBIA says owners are increasingly selecting design-build to achieve best value for projects in any sector of any size while meeting schedule, cost and quality goals.
This graph shows the market share of design-build by building categories for the last nine years by dollar values.
(Click on image to enlarge)
Shortly before the economic downturn a little over five years ago, the use of design-build spiked from 29% of the nonresidential market in 2005 to 36% in 2008, notes DBIA. Throughout the recession period, design-build use continued to grow, and now with the economy stable and slowly recovering, the use of design-build has reportedly held steady at around 40% for the last three years.
Reed/RS Means, one of North America’s largest information providers to the design and construction industry, analyzed detailed data on nearly 1,000,000 construction projects state-by-state and found that the West Coast is where design-build is the most prevalent. In fact, 70% of construction dollars being spent in Oregon are on design-build projects. California is the second-highest state at 59% and Washington the third highest at 56%.
When looking at specific sectors, the military uses design-build on 81% of projects. However, even when military projects are taken out of the equation, Oregon is still the top state due to multifamily residential and industrial sectors’ preference for design-build. Those two industries also lift Michigan to the second-place spot in the list of states doing the most non-military design-build.
“The Reed/RSMeans segmentation analysis now includes nine complete years of actual history, statistically supporting observation of trends at the state and industry sector segment levels,” notes Tim Duggan, Director of Custom Solutions, Reed/RS Means.
RSMeans’ proprietary database of historical and planning construction projects data served as the basis for the study in addition to the incorporation of other publicly and privately available data sources. A copy of the full report, “Design-Build Project Delivery Market Share and Market Size Report,” is available on the DBIA Web site.
