Sharing Work Zone Effective Practices for Design-Build Projects

Executive Summary

Design-build projects are becoming more prevalent as agencies seek to speed up projects to leverage resources through growing use of public-private partnerships, accelerated project timelines, and contracting out design work. There is a need, however, to explore differences between design-build processes and traditional design-bid-build processes and to produce additional best practices and guidance for agencies, owners, and stakeholders in design-build projects.

This project constitutes the second phase of previous work to develop these resources. The specific objectives of this project are to identify and share best practices and guidance on work zone management, quality assurance, and transportation management plan (TMP) development for design-build projects. This information is packaged within this report as a series of lessons learned, best practices, tools for developing TMPs, and sample checklists. The report presents these resources in five core chapters (Chapters 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6), preceded by a brief introduction (Chapter 1). The five core chapters are described briefly below:

Chapter 2: Lessons Learned and Best Practices in Design-Build Projects. This chapter presents bulleted lists of lessons learned and best practices in design-build projects, organized around a variety of pertinent issues and subjects in design-build processes. These issues and subjects include:

• Project selection.
• Design quality management.
• Construction quality management.
• Utilities/right-of-way/railroad coordination.
• Design-builder selection process.
• Writing design-build request for qualifications/proposals.
• Use of alternative technical concepts.
• Schedule performance, milestones, and progress payments.
• Change orders.
• Claims and dispute resolution.

Chapter 3: Transportation Management Plan Development Tools for Design-Build Projects. This chapter presents development tools for the development of TMPs in general as well as for the development of TMP components including temporary traffic control (TTC) plans, traffic incident management (TIM) plans, and public information and outreach (PI&O) plans. The chapter also includes best practices from a survey of selected States, including: Ohio, Florida, Colorado, and California.

Chapter 4: Quality Assurance Tips for Work Zones in Design-Build Projects. This chapter presents a concise, bulleted tip list for managing quality assurance (QA) in work zones in design-build projects.

Chapter 5: Quality Assurance Checklists for Work Zones in Design-Build Projects. Building on Chapter 4, this chapter presents a series of sample inspection checklists to aid design-builders and owners/agencies in conducting quality assurance in work zones in various phases of design-build projects. The checklists contained in this chapter are listed below.

• Nighttime Work Zone Inspection Checklists: These checklists are intended to allow design-builders and owners/agencies to conduct quality assurance inspections on the effectiveness of nighttime work zone operations.
• Public Awareness and Motorist Information Strategies Checklists: These checklists are intended to allow design-builders and owners/agencies to conduct quality assurance inspections on the effectiveness of public awareness and motorist information strategies.
• Work Zone Incident Management Plan Checklists: These checklists are intended to allow design-builders and owners/agencies to conduct quality assurance inspections on the effectiveness of work zone incident management plan.
• Work Zone Inspection Checklists for Urban Freeways with Uninterrupted Flows: These checklists are intended to allow design-builders and owners/agencies to conduct quality assurance inspections on the effectiveness of work zones for urban freeways with uninterrupted flows.
• Work Zone Inspection Checklists for Urban Roadways with Interrupted Flows: These checklists are intended to allow design-builders and owners/agencies to conduct quality assurance inspections on the effectiveness of work zones for urban roadways with interrupted flows.
• Work Zone Traffic Control Inspection Checklists: These checklists are intended to allow design-builders and owners/agencies to conduct quality assurance inspections on the effectiveness of work zone traffic control devices and operations.
• Worker Safety Inspection Checklists: These checklists are intended to allow design-builders and owners/agencies to conduct quality assurance inspections on the effectiveness of worker safety at work zones.

Chapter 6: Additional Checklists to Support Design-Builders and Owners/Agencies. This chapter presents an additional series of sample checklists to support design-builders and owner/agencies in various processes of design-build projects. In particular, several checklists in this chapter pertain to items and issues related to the TMP. The checklists contained in this chapter are listed below.

• Design-Builder's Public Involvement and Outreach Checklists: These checklists include items to be considered for a public involvement and outreach campaign.
• Work Zone Safety Inspection Checklists: These checklists facilitate the owner/agency's review of the safety aspects of the design-builder developed TMP during the final design phase, as well as safety inspection of an active work zone.
• Design-Builder's Work Zone Incident Reporting Checklists: These checklists include various actions that design-builder personnel should undertake at work zone incident sites.
• Post-Construction Work Zone Performance Documentation Checklists: These checklists provide work zone performance monitoring information that the design-builder and owner/agency should jointly undertake with other partners/stakeholders.
• Pre-Construction Coordination Activities Checklists: These checklists include various coordination activities and meetings that the design-builder and owner/agency should jointly undertake with other partners/stakeholders.
• Owner/Agency's Master Checklists: This section includes checklists to cover key steps associated with TMP development and implementation, from preliminary engineering through construction.
• Owner/Agency's Pre-Request for Qualifications/Proposals Checklists: These checklists include various TMP related items that an owner/agency should address in the preliminary engineering phase or consider incorporating during the development of the request for qualifications (RFQ)/request for proposals (RFP).
• Owner/Agency's Proposal Evaluation Checklists: These checklists include TMP related items that an owner/agency should consider in evaluating design-build proposals.
• Owner/Agency's Design Review Checklists: These checklists include various TMP related design items that an owner/agency should consider when reviewing the design-builder’s design documents.
• Owner/Agency's Design and Construction Management Plan Checklists: These checklists include various design and construction quality management items for the owner/agency.