It can be a frustrating affair to get things built in New York City. Layers of bureaucracy and reams of red tape regularly cause even the simplest project to take far longer and cost much more than projected.
Anyone who has renovated a bathroom or put in a new kitchen knows that no two construction projects are alike, with drastic variation in size, complexity and scope. Why wouldn’t we give ourselves all the available tools to do our big capital projects — investing in our cultural institutions, public housing and hospitals, protecting our city from climate change — smartly and efficiently?
Fortunately, Mayor Eric Adams, in the spirit of his City of Yes economic development plan, is spearheading a suite of common-sense solutions to expedite construction across the five boroughs. Now, Albany needs to act.
Progressive design-build and construction manager-build are tools deployed with enormous success in cities and states across the country, as well as by other public owners here in our city. These tools accelerate completion by selecting a team of designers and builders to deliver a public works project from start to finish.
They also improve minority- and women-owned business participation by enabling the city to consider a builder’s track record and approach to engaging MWBEs when awarding a contract. The tools provide more opportunities to bring MWBE subcontractors on board early in the process.
Getting projects done faster and under budget means that more critical public works projects can be built. It also means more jobs. And, of course, it means that all New Yorkers have more public works to use and enjoy.
That may seem noncontroversial, and it should be.
Especially since the current system overcomplicates the process. Doing each step sequentially — design, bid and construction — adds years and cost to every project. It also cuts the builder out from the design phase, sometimes leading to fully designed projects that aren’t readily constructible — which adds even more time and cost. Construction manager-build and design-build allow these steps to happen in parallel, fostering collaboration, drastically cutting schedules and improving the quality of the final product.
Empowered by landmark legislation passed by the state in 2019, the New York City Department of Design and Construction has already completed its first ever design-build project: a garage and community space in Kew Gardens.
The project was completed in two years — less than half the “normal” projected construction timeline under a design-bid-build model — and saved nearly $13 million compared to that model.
As someone who annually approved a city capital budget of more than $60 billion as a member of the City Council, I can only imagine how much progress would have been made if this process were implemented back then.
Libraries across the city often languish with construction delays and long closures associated with having multiple different construction projects under one roof at the same time — problems that can be avoided with construction manager-build, where a single manager oversees all the tradespeople and creates a sensible phasing plan that gets doors reopened sooner. Even the simplest project, upgrading the Juniper Park track and field, took six years to complete, only reopening this past fall after having been approved in 2017.
It’s no wonder that cities across the world are lapping us when it comes to the speed of completing critical infrastructure projects.
How can New York City hope to compete as a global capital if even the most straightforward projects run more than double the projected cost and years over schedule?
That’s why the organization that I represent, the Building Trades Employers’ Association of New York, supports Mayor Eric Adams’s embrace of design-build and construction manager-build.
But we need Albany to act, expanding the methods of constructing capital projects, reauthorizing joint bidding, and ultimately reconstituting the City’s Department of Design and Construction as a new authority.
These are not new and untested concepts. By passing these three basic reforms, Gov. Kathy Hochul and the state Legislature would give New York City powerful new tools to succeed.
Elizabeth Crowley is president and CEO of the Building Trades Employers’ Association.
Elizabeth Crowley , 2024-03-08 16:13:27
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