Washington, D.C.. August 6, 2015 – The Design-Build Institute of America (DBIA) – the only organization that defines, teaches and promotes best practices in design-build – today detailed the results of an updated study on how and where design-build is being utilized in the United States. RSMeans Analytics, a part of The Gordian Group, utilizing project data and specification database partner Construction Market Data, conducted a study to analyze the growing use of design-build and update ongoing research with the latest data findings. The newly released study indicates growth in the use of design-build in several states and the continued leadership of the Pacific region among states with the most dollars being spent on non-residential design-build projects.

“Design-build’s growth in certain states is not surprising,” said Lisa Washington, CAE, CEO/Executive Director of DBIA. “Most of the ten states that used design-build to deliver over half of their non-residential building projects are states where we’ve worked hard to train owners and practitioners in DBIA Best Practices, and/or states where we’ve been able to work with regions and legislators to pass legislation favorable to Design-Build Done Right.”

The RSMeans research showed the overall market share of design-build remained steady at about 40 percent. Over the past decade, use of design-build nationwide has grown by ten percentage points, while use of design-bid-build has fallen by the same.

The military continues to use design-build on nearly 80 percent of building projects, so it only makes sense that states with a high number of military buildings fall in the top ten. The commercial sector uses design-build for more than 50 percent of buildings, and the medical and industrial sectors also continued to see above average usage of design-build, which coincides with the kind of demand DBIA is seeing from owners for training.

“Design-build is even more prevalent in the transportation and water/wastewater sectors than the building sector,” says Tim Duggan, Director of Customer Solutions, RS Means/The Gordian Group, one of North America’s largest construction cost information providers to the construction industry. “Unfortunately, our project database with those kinds of projects is far less likely to include the information to support project delivery method used, which is why this report focuses only on building projects.”

RSMeans’ and its partner CMD’s proprietary database of historical and planning construction projects data served as the basis for the study in addition to the incorporation of other publicly and privately available data sources. They analyzed detailed project and specification data on over 640,000 non-residential construction projects. A copy of the full report, “Design-Build Project Delivery Market Share and Market Size Report,” is available here.