New York City construction official wants to boost design-build

The new associate commissioner of alternative delivery in New York City’s Department of Design and Construction aims to encourage more design-build project delivery in the city.

Alison Landry told Construction Dive that her team is working on a new program to pilot “alternatives to delivering projects outside of the incredibly limiting and ineffective lowest bidder system.” Landry said the program will also consider how to use CM-build, CM-at-risk, and other popular contracting methods.

Landry said the new approach to project delivery will be “faster, more cooperative, and more satisfying with fewer bureaucratic roadblocks.” To win city business, teams should “demonstrate that their staff and team members are capable and qualified to perform design-build work,” but do not need design-build experience to be eligible for the program.

One pilot program includes seven public buildings projects and three infrastructure projects. On one of those, a new Parks operations center, the department is projecting a time savings of three full years using design-build instead of lowest bidder.