The New York City Housing Authority’s (NYCHA) Brownsville Houses serves approximately 5,500 residents across 27 buildings. Its decades-old central steam plant had become unreliable, threatening dependable heat and domestic hot water. NYCHA needed to replace the plant without displacing residents or substantially disrupting daily life.
Design-build offered a departure from traditional plans-and-specifications contracts, where undocumented conditions in aging mechanical facilities often led to disputes and lengthy change-order negotiations. NYCHA used a two-step best-value procurement that first qualified teams based on relevant experience. Shortlisted firms then competed on technical solutions and fixed price using performance requirements developed to approximately 3% design.
Fast Decisions Protect Essential Services
The selected team brought proprietary mobile boiler trailers to the densely occupied site, creating a temporary steam plant beside the existing facility. This allowed the old equipment to be removed while service continued. Both the transition to temporary heat and the return to the permanent system were completed in single coordinated days outside the peak heating season. Domestic hot water remained available throughout construction.
Direct access between the builder and engineer also shortened response times. Submittals and Requests for Information (RFIs) were resolved in an average of two days, compared with the 14 days typical of traditional NYCHA contracts. When demolition exposed a cracked concrete beam, the team designed and completed the repair in fewer than 10 days. The team addressed unexpected conditions beneath the original boiler pads through an overnight redesign.
That responsiveness produced a notable contractual outcome. Comparable NYCHA mechanical projects can generate 50 or more change orders; Brownsville closed with one Owner-directed change worth approximately $20,000. There were no claims or disputes, and the $34.04 million final cost remained essentially equal to the original $34 million contract.
The project finished nearly seven months early with no safety incidents across more than 94,000 work hours. Value engineering also funded high-efficiency domestic hot water equipment in two additional buildings at no added cost to NYCHA.
Design-Build Team
| Client/Owner: | New York City Housing Authority |
| Owner Advisor: | AECOM |
| Design-Builder: | Tully-Richards Joint Venture |
| General Contractor: | Richards Plumbing and Heating Co. |
| Engineers: | Cameron Engineering |
| Specialty Contractors: | Gilston Electrical Construction Co. |
| Project Cost: | $34,040,000 |
| Construction Duration: | 36 months |
Photos
Photo Credits: Richards Plumbing and Heating Co.