Alternative Delivery—Keys to Successful Collaboration in Design and Construction

Alternative Delivery provides tremendous opportunities to optimize the design and construction of pipeline projects, especially when the team excels at collaboration. This paper explores the keys to successful collaboration developed through multiple successful Design Build and Construction Manager at Risk (CMAR) pipeline projects, which range in cost from $2M to $2.3B USD. The authors include discussion on both practical tips for facilitating collaboration and less tangible strategies that create the environment for collaboration. The paper will outline approaches for creating a collaborative team culture, building trust among team members, and creating open dialogue among stakeholders. Once the team culture is established, the paper explores practical solutions like facilitating input at meetings, tracking review milestones, capturing and resolving input, documenting decisions, and tracking the impacts of implemented changes. All of these strategies are built on open and frequent communication among team members. After establishing the Keys to Success, the authors will highlight real world examples where this process has been used to successfully collaborate on pipeline route evaluations, material selection, design criteria, contingency planning, and bypass pumping with buy-in from the stakeholders. This paper highlights successful strategies, but many of these strategies were developed to address issues where collaboration was not being achieved. The author’s goal is to provide real-life examples that will help Project Managers and Project Leaders engage their teams, gain valuable feedback, capture and track feedback at key milestones, and ultimately deliver successful projects for the Team and Owner.