Journals Proceedings

Abstract

Design-Build(D&B) contracts, compared with traditional Design-Bid-Build(D-B-B) contracts, are regarded as a total accountability style of contracting, with everybody on the same team. For public projects, D&B is a kind of relatively low risk procurement option for the employer, in terms of cost and time. As the stages of design and build can be carried out in parallel by the same party, the liability of design errors has been casted on the contractor. Therefore it is found the entitlements of variations in D&B projects are less than D-B-B projects. In this paper, the D&B projects completed between January 2010 and March 2015 were explored. There were 402 D&B projects among 7,082 civil engineering contracts in this period of time. It revealed that the main factors of variations of D&B projects in the past 5 years in Taiwan may be grouped as the changes of the employers’ requirements in design phase and the change orders in construction phases. The analysis of the factors of variation indicated the importance of the management of variation through the well preparation of employers. It is found it could be a risk related to design and quality, particularly if the employer's requirements were not properly gathered and if the design criteria were not properly established. By reviewing the recent D&B projects, this paper is devoted to develop the knowledge of the trends, pros and cons of the practices in Taiwan. It is hoped the lessons learned bring the attentions to the importance of well preparation of employers in D&B projects.