Building a new recreation center in Flatbush named after the illustrious Shirley Chisholm so local kids can take swim lessons. Delivering a dedicated new home for hard-working parks maintenance staff so thousands of beachgoers can enjoy a visit to Orchard Beach. Adding curb extensions to enhance pedestrian safety in one of the busiest midtown corridors on Lexington Ave. outside of Grand Central Terminal.
These are just a few of the projects that the agency I’m proud to lead, the New York City Department of Design and Construction (DDC), is delivering for New Yorkers every day, using design-build to build better, faster, cheaper — and more inclusively.
Design-build, a tool used across the country to much success, was first authorized by the state Legislature in 2019 for DDC and several of our sister agencies. We hit the ground running and plan to keep going, with more than $14 billion already awarded and more in the pipeline.
Under the Adams administration, the city has steered many projects towards design-build delivery, where the design and construction teams work together under a single contract to collaborate from the outset. Sounds like common sense, right? In past years, the city was required by state law to use the design-bid-build method — awarding a design contract, completing design, putting pencils down during a lengthy low-bid process, and then awarding the contract based on price alone.
By bringing teams together under a single contract from the very start, design-build provides tremendous potential for quality and collaboration, in addition to expanded contracting with Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprises and increasing opportunities for good paying construction jobs. In New York City, DDC has led the way — you held us accountable, and we delivered.
The numbers speak for themselves. DDC has saved at least two years on every design-build project, and collectively we estimate that the city’s design-build program has saved more than 50 years of overall time. But we need more tools in our toolbox as projects grow in complexity, with a need to identify site conditions early in the process, address complex regulatory requirements and propose intricate phasing plans.
In 2024 the Adams administration partnered with industry, and state Sen. Leroy Comrie, Assemblyman Ed Braunstein and many more allies to expand DDC’s authorization to include critical tools like progressive design-build for resiliency projects and construction manager-build for libraries and cultural institutions — two contracting models which also consolidate time-consuming and expensive steps from of the outdated design-bid-build model, resulting in faster, more efficient and inclusive project delivery.
DDC has hit the ground running on construction manager build, and we expect to release pilot projects this calendar year. The tool will help renovate the city’s aging public buildings stock and allow us to work on multiple upgrades at once while trying to phase work to keep the buildings open and accessible to the public as long as possible. We are also working to launch a progressive design-build pilot in the near future.
Now, we want to go even further.
This recent state law, applicable only to DDC, limits our options. We need to be able to apply these same tools, saving time and money on projects like fire houses, sanitation garages, and clean energy retrofits across our city to address all kinds of buildings.
Alternative delivery needs to continue to grow, allowing more city agencies and entities to participate with more project types. We have also been collaborating with our sister agencies, sharing best practices, training and lessons learned to improve project delivery across the city.
This year, Gov. Hochul included an expansion to alternative delivery that would allow more tools for the New York City Housing Authority, New York City Health and Hospitals, Department of Transportation, to name a few, in the Executive Budget proposal, paving the way for the city to deliver more projects — like public housing, hospitals, and bridges — with flexible contracting tools.
DDC was proud to lead the way on design-build. These efforts show what can be accomplished when you give us, engineers and architects, what we need to create enduring infrastructure and public buildings for our communities. And it’s about how we better spend your hard-earned taxpayer dollars, deliver on the projects that matter the most to you, and streamline government work to cut time.
We know it works, but to do right by New Yorkers, we can — and must go even further. This session in Albany, let’s do the right thing and expand alternative delivery. Gives us the tools, and we’ll deliver for you.
Foley is commissioner of the Department of Design and Construction.