City Council Special Meeting and Work Session

Patti Innocentistaffbut what we're really talking about here is construction manager at risk or CMAR, and there's a little slide there that gives you an illustration of the relationship between the three parties, or two parties, I'm sorry. So under CMAR, we issue a two-step solicitation. We go out with an RFQ and we pre-qualify the contractors. Then we go back to those that have been pre-qualified. We ask them for their pricing. We validate their technical competence, the schedule. One of the unique factors, and this is also part of the state code, is the contractor cannot self-perform more than 10%. So 90% of the work they're subcontracting out. So we have two contracts, one with our architect engineer and one with the construction manager who also works to advise during design and construction.

Advantages of construction management, better constructability. because you do have a guaranteed maximum price on the contract. It helps mitigate risk. It is well-suited for phased and occupied facilities and faster project delivery by overlapping phases. So this is a little graphic that sort of illustrates the differences between, first on the left you see design bid build, which is the traditional method in the middle, design build, and you can see the overlapping roles between the architect and then your design build contractor, and then on the right, construction manager at risk. This graphic shows and illustrates the comparison on the delivery schedule, and again, design build, you'll see is a little bit faster.

at risk, again, the overlapping roles between the parties involved in the project. And any decision to use any of these is really the responsibility of public works or, you know, if we're a school's project for the city's schools, it's not a determination made under the Office of Procurement Services. My role here is just to conduct the solicitation through the method that they deem to be most advantageous. advantageous for the project. We talked a little bit about risk, so more risk under design bid-build for the owner, less under a design build contract, and even less under a construction manager at risk. Key takeaways, really no size, one size fits all, and you know that speaks to what I was just saying.

We really rely on the decision between the project manager, the owner, and the architect to make those decisions about which method of construction contracting is best for a particular project. so again it's just another tool in the toolbox but what I would like to do is come back to you again in a few weeks as we are required under the Virginia code 2.2 4382 is to first of all adopt a resolution and then adopt procedures to use design build construction practices and then construction manager at risk. It's defined by the state secretary of administration, so there's really a very good template laid out. We would just tailor that to the way that the city wanted to use it, but I'm just here advocating and letting you know that we would like to expand the way and the manner in which we do construction contracting in the city by adding these two alternative procedures.

Stacy Halla very quick question the Willard Sherwood is under a construction manager at risk is that because it's a combined project with the county resolution done?

Patti InnocentistaffSure. So you're asking specifically about CMAR, construction manager at risk?

In practice there are really three parties because we also have a owner's representative who's working on our behalf to oversee the the construction of the project. So there's really three parties involved. We have the architect, we have our project manager, owner's rep, and then we have our GC, who may be also operating as a construction manager at risk if we want that model.