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Design Build Services Procurements

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Rule status: Adopted

Agency: PPB

Effective date: January 11, 2026

Proposed Rule Full Text
Notice-of-Public-Opportunity-to-Comment-on-PPB-Proposed-Amendment-of-Rules-Relating-to-Design-Build-Services-Procurements.pdf

Adopted Rule Full Text
Notice-of-Adoption-Amendment-of-Rules-Relating-to-Design-Build-Services-Procurements.pdf

Adopted rule summary:

The Procurement Policy Board (PPB) amendments update the provisions of the PPB Rules relating to the alternative project delivery method known as design-build. Design-build is one method of alternative project delivery where one entity or a team of separate entities work under a single contract to provide design and construction services. Design-build provides a streamlined method of contracting to promote efficiency in publicly funded projects. This rule amends PPB Rule Sections 1-01, 3-01, 4-04, 4-07, 4-09, and creates a new PPB Rule Section 3-17 to establish rules relating to the design-build alternative project delivery method.

Comments are now closed.

Online comments: 1

  • Claire

    The Design Build process should include RFQs which reward unionized labor and ensure that cost savings and higher profit margins from the updated process does not come from the single vendor entity decreasing wages or using non-unionized contract services to cut on labor costs and thereby exploiting workers. Evaluation criteria should include whether the vendor has documented MOUs with labor unions representing relevant worker types should be included in evaluating vendors.

    Additionally, one downside of the Design Build versus Design-Bid-Build process is less transparency around exact costs. Since the vendor will coordinate all costs related to the project in a Design-Build process, it should be easy for them to also lay out exact costs related to every step of the process, which will not have materially changed. The city should require cost transparency of vendors in this process and have vendors lay out costs by sector (design, construction, materials, etc).

    I am attaching a reading on potential consequences of vertical integration, where one entity owns many parts of a production process and therefore creates a market where consumers or suppliers have no other route to either obtaining what they want or to getting their products to market than to go through a powerful intermediary or gatekeeper.

    Comment attachment
    RI-Vertical-Integration-and-Market-Power-Crisis-Issue-brief-201904.pdf
    Comment added October 7, 2025 11:31am