August 30, 2001

Seattle’s capital projects put partnering to the test

Local land use and construction regulatory agencies often find themselves in the center of controversies regarding the siting and approval of highly visible public and private development projects.

Given the magnitude of financial investment and legitimate neighborhood concerns over environmental, traffic and design issues, the outcomes can range from expensive failures to boring but functional buildings to highly regarded community icons.

The city of Seattle has developed a series of structured partnering approaches to bring key stakeholders together very early in the project’s inception. Discovering common goals, engaging in frank dialogue and writing up in advance how affected parties want conflicts resolved, have resulted in positive relationships and successful projects.

Anyone who has first-hand experience with construction projects knows that the owner, contractor and designer play significantly different roles to complete a project.

When questions arise over changes to project scope, cost or schedule, these parties scramble for cover, concerned over accountability and legal liability. If the project is a big highway project, high school or concert hall, the visibility of a dysfunctional development team is magnified though the press and widespread public opinion about government’s ineptitude in managing large scale construction efforts.

The private sector is also adversely impacted by construction delays and cost overruns, so in the late 1980s the Construction Industry Institute (CII) formed a task force to study innovative approaches to conduct business differently and equitably assign risk.

CII Task Force studied the relationships between successful development teams and their use of an evolving practice of “partnering” to the construction business.

In August 1989 CII’s Partnering Task Force published its findings and best practices. The report offered the following definition of what was commonly viewed as the unique approach that made these business alliances distinctive:

“Partnering is a long-term commitment between two or more organizations for the purpose of achieving specific business objectives by maximizing the effectiveness of each participant’s resources. The relationship is based upon trust, dedication to common goals, and an understanding of each other’s individual expectations and values. Expected benefits include improved efficiency and cost effectiveness, increased opportunity for innovation and the continuous improvement of quality projects and services.”

Following this pioneering baseline work by CII, the Associated General Contractors (AGC), the Army Corps of Engineers and different state departments of transportation began to pilot the structured methods of partnering in their construction projects with a high degree of success.

By the mid-1990s, many more progressive federal, state and local agencies as well as private businesses began to require “partnering conferences” on their large-scale construction projects. While not a panacea to solve all construction-related problems, partnering had become a widely accepted approach to effectively manage complex projects.

During this same time period, the city of Seattle’s regulatory agency, the Department of Design, Construction and Land Use (DCLU), aggressively sought to expand the invitation list for these partnering efforts, which originally only included representatives of the project owner/developer, contractor and major subcontractors and designers.

As the agency that approved land use and construction permits, inspected ongoing work and ensured that final conditions were met before building occupancy, DCLU legitimately believed its participation in these partnering conferences would add value to meeting the objectives of the project.

The regulatory perspective and DCLU’s time commitment on projects with partnering agreements such as Seattle’s new symphony hall, Key Arena, Experience Music Project and Harborview Medical Center’s trauma center proved to be invaluable for all parties.

DCLU’s leadership team learned from using the basic techniques suggested by the Army Corps of Engineers, CII and AGC and its experience on construction projects, how to get to the next level of partnering.

We wanted to extend the reach of construction-oriented partnering process to dramatically change the dynamics between the city and other public agencies with multiyear, phased capital improvement projects. Our initial “target” customer was the Seattle School District, taking on the challenge of working with the district on its Building Excellence Program.

A voter-approved levy had given the district $330 million over six years to remodel and expand 13 schools and construct six new schools. The previous and more modest capital project effort by the district resulted in many conflicts between city agencies, the public and the district. Obviously no one was looking forward to repeating the past.

This set the stage for a novel attempt to reasonably apply the construction partnering model to build trust and accomplish this ambitious construction program. Given the previous relationship and a skeptical district program manager, it still took a bit of diplomacy between the mayor’s office, the school superintendent and the school board to allow key players from the city and district to prepare for and participate in a two-day partnering workshop, the symbolic kick-off event for the new team effort.

Over the last several years, DCLU has gone beyond its initial partnership work with the Seattle School District to include similar sessions with the Seattle Public Library and the regional public transit agency, Sound Transit.

The general format for the single construction project partnering sessions and the more “programmatic” partnering conferences are similar, but there is more advanced preparation needed to conduct a successful event that is the beginning to a long-term commitment to partner.

For instance, public officials often take for granted that a set of common assumptions and goals exist when capital projects are planned and approved.

Of course, local citizens want their schools, libraries and roads completed “on time and within budget.” However, the questions not often not asked are whether there are competing or even conflicting priorities between different agencies, whether the various decision-makers agree on how to achieve the program objectives, and whether there are ways to help each other be successful.

Conclusions

The school district and the city have been extremely pleased with how well the partnership approach has worked on the Building Excellence projects that have been either started or completed since 1998. In fact, given the voter approval in 2001 of a renewal of the school district’s financing levy for the next phase of Building Excellence, we have already started to plan the next partnering session.

The focus of this article has been to discuss how a regulatory agency has been able to support the needs of other government agencies facing the management challenge of completing dozens of capital projects within time and cost constraints and that are highly regarded by the community.

Seattle’s Department of Design, Construction and Land Use has gotten the reputation as being an advocate for partnering to achieve mutually beneficial outcomes for all stakeholders. This has not only allowed project proponents to complete their projects within their time and financial constraints — the community has gained a much higher quality of urban infill projects in their neighborhood.

Finally, as DCLU has asked the business community and the public for suggestions on how to improve our regulatory services, we have found that the partnering spirit has been returned with many excellent suggestions for continuous improvement of our processes. We have even seen a relaxation of the anxiety formerly associated with gaining regulatory approvals — with many more win-win outcomes and far fewer unresolved disputes.

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• Bidding procedures
  
• Old dogs can teach new tricks
  
• How interagency cooperation works for Seattle Schools
  
• How to make your partnering a success
  
• Survive the neighborhood firing line
  
• Raze or renovate?
  
• Why size matters
  
• An urban small-school success story