Alison Landry, the newly appointed affiliate commissioner of different supply in New York Metropolis’s Division of Design and Building, needs to vary how contractors method design-build within the metropolis.
Landry’s appointment, introduced in August, indicators a brand new concentrate on different supply strategies. Licensed architect Landry has helped construct out the town’s framework for design-build jobs by means of a pilot program that now encompasses seven public buildings and three infrastructure tasks, with a further eight tasks within the pipeline.
Right here, Landry discusses upcoming tasks, objectives for her new job and what builders have to find out about design-build within the New York Metropolis space.
Editor’s Observe: This interview has been edited for brevity and readability.
CONSTRUCTION DIVE: What are your instant objectives in your new position?
ALISON LANDRY: My main focus is to construct an adaptive framework that can guarantee we’re efficiently utilizing different strategies to ship capital tasks that meet New York Metropolis’s more and more advanced and pressing wants.
Our staff is constructing out a model new program to pilot options to delivering tasks outdoors of the extremely limiting and ineffective lowest bidder system that the town has been pressured by state regulation to make use of for greater than a century. The best way the town delivers advanced capital tasks is inefficient — it takes too lengthy and it’s not how tasks are constructed within the personal sector and even on the state authorities degree.
We’ve restricted permission to make use of design-build for sure tasks, however the metropolis and taxpayers would see large advantages if we had latitude to pick out the best supply software for every challenge, and will use CM-build, CM-at-risk and different common contracting strategies along with design-build.
Alison Landry
Courtesy of NYC DDC
It is a important change from how metropolis authorities has historically contracted to construct our tasks. Administering a design-build contract could be very totally different from the standard lowest bidder design-bid-build course of.
What’s the state of the New York Metropolis development market in the mean time?
New York Metropolis is at all times a really dynamic market, and much more so now with the interrelated environmental elements of price escalations, provide chain and labor. We’re taking a look at instruments to assist assist our trade companions to take away a few of the uncertainty that may include doing enterprise with the town.
For instance, we’re piloting using a assured most value mechanism to offer better flexibility after contract award, but in addition setting parameters to make sure that administering this contract isn’t overly burdensome.
Are there any upcoming tasks that you’ve got your eye on for different supply strategies?
We have already got a rising design-build pilot program that features seven public buildings tasks — civic buildings equivalent to operations facilities for the Parks Division — and three infrastructure tasks, together with future security enhancements alongside components of Lexington Avenue.
At one new Parks operations middle, we’re projecting a time financial savings of three full years utilizing design-build as an alternative of lowest bidder contracting. And we’re doing it with fewer disruptions as a result of our designers and our contractors are working collectively, not in opposition to one another as is commonly the case with design-bid-build.
What do contractors have to find out about utilizing different supply strategies within the metropolis?
They should know that it’s going to be a unique expertise for them than any metropolis work they’ve carried out earlier than. It’s going to be quicker, extra cooperative and extra satisfying with fewer bureaucratic roadblocks.
They need to additionally know that contractors don’t want design-build expertise to be eligible for our program. Contractors and designers additionally don’t have to have prior expertise working collectively to pursue new work collectively.
We would like groups to display that their employees and staff members are succesful and certified to carry out design-build work, but it surely’s essential as we arrange our program that direct expertise isn’t a limiting issue. We’re additionally keen to have interaction with the trade and to be an proprietor of alternative and place our trade companions to take possession of this work.
Do you suppose different supply strategies, like design-build, are the way forward for development?
What we name different supply strategies are certainly the way forward for metropolis development, however they’re already the current for nearly all people else. After I discuss to folks from authorities companies across the nation, they’ll’t imagine that we’re constrained the best way we’re and till there’s change in Albany (New York’s capital) we’ll proceed to be restricted by outdated enterprise fashions.
There’s large potential for the town to achieve success delivering high-quality, well timed work when the supply staff is built-in, chosen primarily based on high quality and greatest worth and totally coordinated on the onset of the challenge. A key consideration for us is the quantity of resource-intensive procurements that may happen concurrently. It is a issue for our employees in addition to for the trade.
We’re hopeful that instruments like progressive design-build and CM-build work properly with the number of challenge constraints.
What ought to builders know concerning the market, and what the DDC is in search of in contractors that work with the town?
They need to know that our dedication to Minority and Ladies-Owned Companies stays very excessive and we see different, value-based contracting as a software that can permit us to extend MWBE contract awards even larger.
It’s essential for us to assist rising MWBEs not simply to account for historic inequities but in addition to increase the pool of corporations competing for our contracts, and we take our position very critically.