Assessing the rise of Design-Build-Finance Delivery in Transportation Infrastructure

While other alternative project delivery methods have emerged to address the limitations of Design-Bid-Build, Design-Build-Finance (DBF) has surfaced more recently. Although DBF has gained prominence in the past decade, research pertaining to this method is limited. Consequently, this research investigated the use of DBF for the delivery of transportation infrastructure by five State DOTs: Florida, North Carolina, Georgia, Michigan and Texas through a combination of interviews with DOT personnel and investigation of completed or on-going DBF projects. To complement this, subject matter experts (SMEs) were interviewed to obtain a more general market perspective of DBF. As a result, two variants of DBF, DBF – Receivables and DBF – Risk Transfer, were identified; the DOTs investigated and the US more broadly, primarily use the DBF - Receivables variant where the contractor is entitled to payments for the activities completed irrespective of the project's completion. Whereas in the DBF – Risk Transfer variant, the contractor's payments are linked to the completion of the project. Further, DBF is employed on projects that are (i) in need of acceleration, which generates (ii) social and economic benefits such as congestion relief and safety enhancements; such projects are also (iii) subjected to short-term budgetary restrictions, but they typically have (iv) funds programmed in the future. The distinction found in the variants of DBF provides a better understanding of the drivers of DBF, which were validated through interviews. In practice, this distinction also aids public agencies in better identification of the appropriate project delivery method for a given project.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Civil Engineering

Department dc:contributor.department

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2020

Author dc:creator

• Gurram, Vikas

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Garvin, Michael J.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Kumar, Raman
• Shealy, Earl W.

• Design-Build-Finance
• Drivers of DBF
• Challenges of DBF

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

vt_gsexam:26395

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/98823