CONTENT EXPIRES: December 31, 2025

Design-Build contracts transfer the responsibility for design quality control to the Design-Builder. Hence, the Owner's role becomes one of quality oversight and its involvement in the technical review of design deliverables becomes very different than in a traditional design-bid-build design contract. The speed with which DB projects are delivered puts design approval on the critical path, creating a need to expedite design quality control activities to achieve release for construction documents. It also creates a situation where Owner-generated comments can result in delay claims. This presentation reports the use of design quality audits as a mechanism to promote timely communications, which acts as a dispute avoidance tool. A framework for implementing design quality audits is presented in the context of a $400 million DB RiverRenew Tunnel water/wastewater project. The key contribution is showing that design quality audits allows the Owner to perform its due diligence responsibility to monitor DB project quality in a manner that does not usurp the Design-Builder’s responsibility to produce quality construction documents and avoid becoming the sources of project delay claims. It also emphasizes that design quality issues must be given visibility to facilitate the timely response to and correction of contract noncompliance.