Wesley Joyce on How to make interstate construction projects quicker.
Wesley Joyce
How to make interstate construction projects quicker.
Claims and stances
Transcript
- 0:00 Hey, so we're all familiar with construction projects on and around highways that just drag on for years and years and years.
- 0:10 I can think of in Macon, Georgia, you know, they're redoing those interstates there, and it feels like they've been doing that since I was a kid.
- 0:17 You know, I can't remember ever driving through Macon and not driving through an awful construction zone.
- 0:23 And I'm sure we can all think about this in Savannah as well.
- 0:26 I mean, everywhere you look, all across Atlanta, you know, these things just take so long because it's so hard to work safely around these people.
- 0:33 But something I want to talk about, and something that's been changing lately within departments of transportation, um, different states, DOTs, all across the nation, is historically these um interstate projects and these big road projects have been um very much um design bid build contract types, and this this is the most traditional method of uh contract type in construction, it's the most widely used and the oldest practice.
- 1:03 Um, but in design bid build, you need the design first, so the owner, in this case, the project owner would be the government.
- 1:10 Um, they procure their design and see this design phase can take four to five years on some of these projects just because it's so hard to predict the flow of traffic, predict what people are gonna do.
- 1:22 Um, so then that leads to a lot of changes and decisions on how they build these highways over time.
- 1:28 Um, and when you have these design build build bid build projects, you know, you don't get to the bidding phase until years after it's been established that change is needed.
- 1:38 Then you bid on it, the bidding process is slow, and then you build it, and it takes years, absolutely years.
- 1:44 Um especially the recently I've been looking in the Tennessee Department of Transportation and how they handled um some of the the aftermath of Helene, Hurricane Helene, and what they had to fix up with that is a contract type or a project delivery method known as integrated project design.
- 2:03 And in this contract type, um the owner, the architect, and the contractor all share equity in the projects end goal, which is not necessarily the case in design bid build.
- 2:14 Um the designers are paid their fee and then the contractors are paid their fee.
- 2:20 So the incentive to collaborate and get things done on time isn't nearly as high.
- 2:24 But also with integrated project design, um, you begin construction at around 50% of your schematic design.
- 2:31 So you you're starting years in advance, and Tennessee has already completed multiple bridge projects, and Hurricane Helene is wiped out under this delivery method.
- 2:40 And you know, especially with these um and also thinking about you know, it's good to have a contractor on board early to have safety be talked about that early on, like actual job site safety and worker safety because if it's an unsafe workspace and you can't work, and that's something that a lot of civil engineers and architects don't usually consider as well as government agencies who are just trying to get a road built.
- 3:03 Um so having that level of collaboration early is definitely very beneficial when it comes to these um large scale infrastructure projects, and I'm hoping that we can hopefully see a lot more integrated um design and construction to just speed it up because I am tired of driving through these construction zones.
- 3:21 But yeah, let me know what y'all think.