Buy something on Amazon recently?  Purchased an airline or ticket and experienced upcharges for bags, seat selection, or a snack?  Want to drive on US 36 in the fast lane or been to Universal Studios in Florida and had the "fast pass" groups cut in front of you?  The current internet-generation is accustomed to this form of bidding and although many Gen Xs and older demographics feel nickel-and-dimed, the next generation of industry professionals currently accepts and sometimes prefers this pay-for-what-you-use approach.  What does this mean for the future of the industry? Wember is often an integral party the discussion and final selection of the construction delivery method.  Over the first part of our last twelve years in providing Owner's Representation to the public sector, projects in Colorado were primarily driven by hard bid.  As the economy picked up in 2003 negotiated work such as Construction Manager at

Imagine for a moment you are a maid of honor and are planning an engagement party on behalf of the bride’s parents who graciously offered to pay for the event.  The bride has sent you exact details of what she wants from the venue location to the type of wine along with a wish list of a few items, including Cinderella carriage ice sculpture.  The bride has asked to have the costs and the final list of vendors prepared for a meeting with her mother and father in four weeks, on a Saturday afternoon.  You bravely agree to assist, take the specific instructions and begin planning. The first week you are busy and don’t make any progress other than reviewing the information and generally compiling a list of who might be a good match to be a part of this big day. The second week you proceed to

My father was a pilot for United for 36 years and I benefited from his job by being able to travel standby all the way through college. When I started flying, 50% of Americans had flown on a plane compared to nearly 80% today. Airplanes had class segregation via a solid curtain. First-class had an open bar and real silverware, including knives. Then came the race for low fares spearheaded by the Southwest Airlines' hub-and-spoke model in lieu of larger airlines’ less efficient network system. Wrap it in a bow called the internet and you have what the construction industry has dealt with for years, hard bid. Last week my wife purchased her round trip ticket to Chicago for $209, note that when we moved to Denver 14 years ago a round trip ticket cost $200. She was thrilled with the price and made it safely to her

At the Construction Owner Association of America (COAA) conference we recently attended in Baltimore there were a lot of sessions and even more discussion on Integrated Project Delivery (IPD). One of the critical items for success was identified as collocation of the team. The consensus was that to truly collaborate teams need to be put together and removed from “silo’s” and sometimes office influences (I think this means ownership and their own agendas). This integrated approach goes beyond just putting people in the same room but removes them from the culture of their office and thrusts them into a level of communication not normally practiced in the industry. Although a great ideas in concept the conversation led to some real issues that would need to be addressed. Logistics: Location: So if you are going to collocate where do you put the people. If it is a truly neutral

One of our roles in the AEC industry, especially as an Owner’s Representative, is to educate clients on a multitude of items, including Construction Delivery Methods. We have presented the options to clients many times over, only to watch their eyes glaze over with all the acronyms and options. So now, via this blog, we take a bit of a different approach to highlighting the similarities and differences between each methodology. The Context: Your anniversary is coming up and you want to treat your spouse to a very special dinner; you have budgeted $125 per plate, and you think about what you want to achieve to make it special. Scenario One. You go to your favorite restaurant and meet with the head chef. You ask him to come up with a meal that includes three courses - salad, dinner, and desert - as well as a bottle of

In the year ahead, we will be in the fortunate position of project managing the design and construction of two new libraries of very similar program (needs, size, and budget)for the Denver Public Library – one located in Green Valley Ranch and one in the Stapleton neighborhood. This will put us in a unique position as Green Valley Ranch is being delivered via the design-bid-build method and Stapleton by the Construction Manager/General Contractor (CM/GC) method. This scenario will allow a side-by-side comparison of these two delivery methods, and a great way to contrast them “real-time”. We’re calling it “The Tale of Two Libraries”. For context, and to set the stage for our future blogs on this subject, the status of each project is as follows: Green Valley Ranch – the project has been fully designed, and we are in the final stages of contractor selection; construction will likely