What’s happening in justice project delivery?
An open, provocative forum of discussion.
Listen, learn, educate...participate!
The American Institute of Architects' Academy of Architecture for Justice (AAJ) is pleased to announce its 2013 Fall Conference September 18-21, 2013 at the Portland Hilton Hotel in Portland, Oregon. The three-day conference is open to AIA and non-AIA members, all of those active in justice facilities including planners, architects, owners, public safety officials, officers and administrators, contractors and vendors.
The 2012 conference scholars, Emanuel Resendes, Assoc. AIA, and Erin Costino discuss the day’s events with AAJ Leader Lorenzo M. Lopez, AIA in Toronto, ON.
The theme of this year’s conference is the evolving prevalence of several forms of alternative project delivery as those processes have been applied to the justice building environments. Each version of these various methods has much to recommend it but each also inevitably entails certain challenges with the justice environments adding another level of complexity given the paramount issues of security and safety.
Over the past decade, the use of various forms of alternative project delivery has increased substantially in the public sector and has become the preferred approach by public entities wishing to circumvent the many challenges of the low-bid, design-bid-build delivery process. These methods include Construction Manager (CM) at Risk, Construction Manager / General Contractor-Guaranteed Maximum Price (CM/GC-GMP), Public Private Partnerships (P3), Private Finance Initiatives (PFI), Design/Build, Integrated Project Delivery (IPD), and hybrids thereof. Enabling legislation and successful projects have energized alternative delivery methodologies as attractive and viable options for public entities. The most common advantages of the method cited by owners are savings in delivery time and costs combined with a transfer of liability and subsequent reduction in claims.
But in the pragmatism of realizing these interests, does the “one-stop-shop design and build (and operate)” stifle creativity, compromise functional design, diminish value, and cheapen the final product? Further, do viable, sustainable business models for all the participants derive from these delivery environments? For those planners and designers who practice predominately in the public sector, and specifically in the criminal justice arena, this evolving context represents a “sea” of change in the way that we will market our services and practice our professions. To be implemented successfully in their current forms, alternative delivery methodologies do and will require a major cultural shift by all engaged parties.
The goal of the annual AIA AAJ National Conference for 2013 is to provide a forum for open, vibrant, and provocative discussion of the “Best Practices” in project delivery across the total spectrum of owners, design professionals, contractors, vendors, operators, and financiers, active within the criminal justice building community. Come, listen, learn, and participate!
