About our Sessions

Design and construction constraints driven by numerous project criteria such as location, permitting, financing, and schedule continue to create challenges for traditional engineering approaches. Construction and materials technologies emerge that address specific challenges; however, engineers experienced in these emerging technologies are naturally few in number, and often closely tied to the provider of the technology. This commonly leads to a prime designer utilizing the deferred design approach to allow for the design of an “emerging” technology to be performed by the provider’s engineering staff as a part of the construction team. While this approach mitigates issues with sole source contracting or allows for an optimized design by a specialty contractor, it creates a risk in the integrated project design process by inherently excluding a key design team member.

This presentation will review the benefits and risks of deferred design through a combination of case histories and compiled project experience. Using the lessons learned, the presenter will provide project examples where specific expertise was implemented during the design phase to manage the risks of deferred design without impacting the specialty contractor’s ability to optimize the solution based on their specific expertise.