Why is Steve Smiling?
Ever wonder how to make a 30-year transportation engineer thoroughly enjoy his job? According to Steve Noble, DOWL’s alternative delivery leader, it’s adding progressive design-build projects to the mix.
“Not only are we actually seeing projects come to life,” said Steve, “but the process is much more collaborative and can take away much of the friction that can happen with other delivery methods.”
And Steve knows what it’s like to work on every type of project. He’s been designing and managing transportation and utility infrastructure projects since the first mobile flip phone went on sale (the Motorola StarTAC in case you were wondering).
Back then it was primarily design-bid-build projects, but for the past 20 years DOWL has been building its alternative delivery resume and has become an industry leader in design-build, construction management general contractor (CMGC), and even the new kid on the block, progressive design-build.
“Progressive design-build is still in the early acceptance stage, but the clients with whom we’ve helped to execute their first progressive design-build projects almost always prefer them.” said Steve.
Steve says their advantage is that they combine the best of CMGC and design-build into one delivery method. They offer public agencies the opportunity to mitigate risk and have a more collaborative relationship with their contractors.
We have been sharing our alternative delivery expertise with longtime clients across market sectors and state lines because cost and schedule certainty is critical for many agencies, and they have proven to be a great business line for DOWL.
For Steve, the primary reason for focusing his career on alternative delivery projects is because it just feels good. “I love my job again.” Steve mused. “It’s true, the pace of alternative delivery projects is fairly aggressive, but especially for progressive design-build projects, the comradery and commitment to solve issues together makes working on them a real joy.”
If you want to know more about alternative delivery, shoot us a line at info@dowl.com. We’d love to link you up with Steve so he can answer your specific questions or give a general rundown of the contracting options and what might be best for you.