Delivery model
Design-Build
One contract covers both the drawing and the building of it, so there is a single team and a single source of accountability from concept to completion.
One firm, one contract, one team from concept to completion.
Contracting both design and construction through Geddes-Armstrong puts one team in the room instead of two. Decisions move faster because the people pricing a change are the same people building it, which streamlines decision-making and reduces the change orders that come from a design and a bid drawn up by strangers to each other. Because design and construction are not forced into strict sequence, early construction activity can begin before every design detail is finalised, which suits a compressed timeline or a scope that is still evolving.
Geddes-Armstrong has been the general contractor and construction manager in Norman and the OKC metro since 1967. Call (405) 329-1460.
What changes on your project
Six things a design-build contract actually does differently.
Every one of these is a working practice on a Geddes-Armstrong design-build job, not a marketing claim about teamwork. The same discipline that priced Oklahoma Electric Cooperative's general contracting work applies here, with the design decisions folded in earlier.
Single entity for design and construction
One contact, one team, and accountability that does not split between two firms pointing at each other when something needs an answer.
Early budgeting for design considerations
Real-time pricing feedback while the design is still being drawn, so decisions get made with cost clarity instead of a surprise number at bid time.
Builder input during design
Constructability reviews and value-engineering recommendations before a detail is locked, catching the kind of problem that otherwise shows up mid-framing.
Collaborative relationship
Transparent communication across every stakeholder, with owner, builder and designer working from the same goals instead of three separate ones.
Competitively bid subcontractors and suppliers
The trades are still selected through open-market bidding, chosen for performance and value rather than a single-source markup.
Options to expedite the construction schedule
Early-phase construction can start while design work continues on later phases, fast-tracking the calendar for a compressed deadline.
If the delivery model itself is the open question rather than design-build specifically, the full comparison against construction management, cost-plus and competitive bid is laid out on the commercial construction page.
Where the collaboration happens
The room where the owner, the builder and the designer sit at the same table.
That is what a collaborative relationship looks like in practice: not a memo forwarded between two offices, but people in the same room while a plan is still being drawn, arguing out a detail before it gets poured.
On the record
A guaranteed maximum price they actually held to.
This is the first project I was not forced to make cutback on due to cost overruns. GAC gave us an original guaranteed maximum price (GMAX) that they remarkably were able to stay within. Further, their GMAX price was markedly less than what other construction management companies were willing to do our project for.