January 07, 2010
The
problem with design-build, as a general concept, is that the system is
stacked in favor of the builder. Naturally, the builder does not see
this as a problem. But the buyer should.
Let me back up a little.
According to Wikipedia, "Design-build is a construction project
delivery system where, in contrast to 'design-bid-build' (or
'design-tender'), the design and construction aspects are contracted
for with a single entity known as the design-builder or design-build
contractor." Design-build is widely used for small- to mid-size
construction projects because of the system's many advantages. Enhanced
communication and a faster turnaround time are staples of the
design-build system.
Design-build has a few drawbacks, as well. Major among them is the
system's short-cut design process. And because the builder is also the
designer, it is only natural to expect that the designs will gravitate
to technologies most preferable (read profitable) to the builder. If
you ask the stone mason to design and build your house, you can be
certain that the house will have stone walls. Ask the carpenter -
you'll get two-by-fours all over. You get the picture.
Design-build can be efficient if you are building a shed, or an
addition to a brick house. But if you are a city government, looking to
invest in a new stadium or concert hall, you will take a different
approach. You will start by selecting an architect.
Why am I talking about construction in this article? Because everything
I said about a construction system applies to any other system,
including a GIS.
How does an organization go about initiating a GIS implementation? More
often than not, it is by first selecting a vendor (i.e., a builder).
This process is stacked in the vendors' favor, as discussed above.
In my 18+ years of GIS implementation experience in the New Jersey
region, I have witnessed hundreds of GIS installations, mostly in local
government. Almost all of them were procured and developed through the
design-build process, as if no other project-delivery system existed.
Buyers would issue a home-grown RFP, collect apple-and-orange responses
and then select a design-builder (usually a software vendor or an
engineer). With increasing frequency, the buyer would throw out all
responses because none of the respondents could correctly guess what
the buyer was looking for.
If a contractor selection is made and the project does move forward,
the implementation jumps straight into data development, because the
vendor selection has automatically selected the platform. What happens
next?
Project delays and cost overruns are common. Many systems do not meet
the buyers' current and future needs. Many are shelved. Many are never
maintained. Many meet with resistance from their intended users. Why is
that? Because of a poor, rushed or entirely missing system design phase.
There is a better way. Begin the process by selecting and hiring a GIS
architect. GIS architects know the industry inside and out, follow
technology trends and know the vendors' strengths and weaknesses. An
independent GIS architect will study the owner's needs, help develop a
program, prepare an RFP, select a vendor and oversee the system
implementation.
It is high time to recognize GIS architecture as its own specialty and
GIS architects as a crucial and integral component of the GIS design,
development and implementation process. Nobody disputes the need for an
architect in building construction. Nobody disputes the architect's
fees, either (running between 6.5% and 30% of the total construction
cost). This is just how it works. And it does work. Just look around -
there are so many beautiful buildings. Even the ugly ones function as
intended. Rarely does a building collapse on its own.
Not so in GIS. When it comes to GIS, all too often organizations do the
equivalent of hiring the bricklayer to do the design, all too often
with devastating results. The GIS landscape is littered with
Frankensteins, a wasteland of wasted effort, where bitter early
adopters often claim that GIS stands for "Gee, I'm Sorry."
If you are planning to spend $1M on a GIS, budget an extra $65,000 (at a minimum) for a GIS architect. You won't be sorry.
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| I've noticed a trend in the last few years. An RFP gets issued requesting detailed architectural descriptions. Once they receive responses, the issuer derives a synthesized design based on ideas from submitted proposals. The project is then restructured. A new RFP is then issued requesting bids to construct the synthesized design. Or, sometimes construction is performed in-house or contracted out in pieces. Either way, the result is the same: the architects who did the original design work (submitted as proposals) never get paid. There is a lot of talk these days about geodesign. We need to design a marketplace where geodesigners can sell their services. Only when the marketplace works will good geodesign practices flourish. Designing a market where crowdsourcing and professional geodesign co-exist won't be easy. Maybe virtual charettes could be offered in a SaaS fashion. |
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| Good article Antanas. Knowing about municipal government and G.I.S., I have seen wasted money because Towns simply don't know what to ask for in an RFP. Town managers get sold on the graphics and pretty aerials but rarely know that a successful G.I.S. starts with an accurate base map. Using your construction analogy, when building a structure, make sure to invest in a solid foundation. That foundation in G.I.S. is the base mapping and who can provide this better than a Professional Land Surveyor. |
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| The author has a very bias understanding of what true design-build is and how it works effectively for both Owner, the project, and the D-B company. My firm has successfully completed hundreds of public building D-B projects. DBIA certifies knowledgable and professional D-B firms/individuals. Check them out on dbia.org |
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| Kirk: Yes, design is cheap. Mostly, IMHO, because system buyers do not realize the importance of the phase. And who better than system designers to bring light to the issue? Paul: Yes, of course. Again, who better than the system designer to appreciate the importance of a solid foundation? David: All opinions contain bias. As far as understanding goes, I tried to enhance mine by interviewing a conventional architect with D-B experience while researching this article. For the record, he was strongly in favor of D-B. |
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| Good article Atanas! I may add that more than often there is a tendency to hire those companies that will declare on the responding RFP’s “we have done that before”. The issue being that some of these companies have a track record of costly and poorly designed systems. As a consultant, educating Clients is the best thing you can do and that is EXACTLY the job of a GIS Architect. |
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| Good article! Being a GIS consultant from the northeast U.S., I've seen many cases of design build GIS programs that have gone estray with wasted tax payer dollars and unhappy clients. We always encourage our clients to shop around and help point them in directions that will benefit them not the vendor. |
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| Atanas hits it on the head. This industry is becoming a real science where you need a expert to have a thorough understanding of the nuts and bolts and what makes it work. Clients might have a understanding of what end product they want but few have any real idea how to get there or how to draft the right RFP to get it done. A "architect" is a person that can help someone with their vision and desires before anything is built - in any field. |
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| For a D/B project to be successful (brick & mortar, software, whatever), the Owner must be sophisticated enough and have enough human resource to be heavily engaged through the design process and avoid the obvious D/B pitfalls. If you have a reputable contractor and good Owner's representation, D/B can be a great project delivery method. What we have tried for IT focused projects is what I will call a "half-design build" where design is completed to a certain level (physical network, functional specs) and is included in the D/B rfp; then vendors can propose unique solutions/products to finish the design/project with products/services that are unique to their firm. |
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| Great article Antanas. I would add that alongside proper design is the need to understand life cycle costs, resource requirements, etc. I find this particularly true for organizations that are new to GIS projects. Where there isn't an appropriate existing infrastructure to accommodate ongoing obligations, projects will fail. |
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| Missing throughout the existing debate posts is the fact that each delivery method available to owners has a purpose. Design-bid-build, CMAR, Design-Build, Cost Plus, Job Order Contracting, et al are merely tools in a tool box for an owner. An owner should not rely on one delivery method for every project but utilize the one that best suite their need. Any relationship, whether it is personal or business, should center on trust and not confrontation. Most of the opinions posted (yes, everyone has a right to their own opinion) tend to gravitate toward a ‘finger-pointing’ relationship or my service is better than your service attitude. If owner’s and vendors could work in an environment that supports common goals, one in which the owner’s needs are met and one in which the vendor is reimbursed a fair and reasonable price for the service and value received (note I did not say based on the lowest bid) the procurement of services system would begin to sway to one of trust and relationship building and away from the typical confrontational relationships. |
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| Brilliant article Atanas! Right on the spot! It seems this problem exists in all fields where it is more “convenient” to chose the process over the substance. |
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| Antanas, Good article that has started a really interesting thread. From a venders perspective we have driven the market to this, or the market has driven us to this. It used to be fairly standard to do full blown needs assessments, requirements documents, technical design and implementation plans for anywhere from 20 to 100k depending on the complexity of the client organization. Now if you can’t design, development, and implement a solution for that you probably aren’t still in the industry. Whether that was driven by a perceived waste of money for all the planning on the client side, not being able to execute on designed architecture on the vender side, or a host of other reasons, it is a challenge to find organizations that see the value in the GIS foundation building. This phenomenon has spawned a number of vendors to create boiler plate architecture documents that magically connect client requirements to products offered by the particular vendor. To continue your analogy; if you want to live in this neighborhood I can put you into my A, B, or C model house. You can choose the color (webpage banner color and logo) and maybe even the fixtures (button location and styles and even SQLServer or Oracle). Some times that works fine but in the long run the clients are left disappointed. However, as organizations are rolling GIS into the mainstream IT enterprise and putting the CIO’s in charge, the pendulum is swinging back to requiring proof that the a GIS solution will not only fit within the existing infrastructure but be able to integrate across solutions within that infrastructure – forcing GIS architecture analysis and planning. I think this alone is driving the GIS Architecture specialty. And a specialty it is. There are so many technologies involved with GIS and Enterprise solutions that there just aren’t that many folks that know enough to provide unbiased recommendations. As Kirk mentioned, those of us who believe our secret sauce is in managing to still provide the architectural component as part of our overall solution are being asked to reveal our knowledge as part our response to win work. From the client side, not a bad tactic. Get a bunch of architectures, pick one, and re-release the RFP. But for us solution providers, how do we write a proposal that doesn’t give away our Coke recipe to competitors and not be disqualified for non-responsiveness. That is the business challenge for us. Specializing in GIS Architecture does not come cheap. |
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| Good article. Continuing the metaphor, if the maintenance crew doesn't repair broken windows, the life cycle will be short. And if they start re-arranging load bearing walls because a department wants a different floor plan, the whole building could collapse. This speaks not just to hiring an architect, but providing ongoing support, or at least educating the local maintenance crew! |
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| Thank you all for the great comments. The building analogy seems to be working. It looks like the article struck a nerve. I am glad it did. I would be remiss if I did not specifically acknowledge Dan Levine's comment. Our "secret sauce" is indeed what makes a system work or not. Clients have become used to getting the recipe for free. It's a tough challenge to reverse these expectations. But I think it's doable. |
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| Instead of going about it in the traditional way of building the structure with high upfront costs and long lead-time, the building architect can recommend the customer the better option of building the edifice incrementally using modular building systems with all the services of electricity, water, furniture, laundry, cleaning, etc. outsourced to specialist service companies. With this option, the customer can start using the building within a weeks of appointing the architect and elect to expand the structure as the space or functionality requirements grow, based on his user experience. As new service delivery models such as cloud computing, virtualization, etc are becoming mature enough for deployment in the geospatial arena, the GIS architect today can recommend a system that can be deployed in a few days or weeks to offer significant and rapid results to the customer: • with computing platform, geospatial data, GIS application functionality, data management… services outsourced to specialists • without incurring the upfront cost or maintenance overhead of hosting any server hardware, software, or data in house • with pay as you go facility for all the services Cheers |
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