Advocating for Design-Build — Without Squeezing the Life Out of It

Design-build is on the rise, but keeping up with legislative changes is no small task. In this episode, we explore the latest policy updates, new bills shaping the industry and the challenges design-build faces across the country.

DBIA’s Director, State/Local Legislative Affairs Richard Thomas, our go-to state and local legislative expert, and Lydig Construction's Vice President of Operations, Eastern Region Vince Campanella, a veteran of alternative delivery and Chair of the DBIA Legislative Committee, join the show to break down:

✅ Where design-build authority is expanding
✅ The increasing momentum of progressive design-build
✅ How DBIA influences policy at the state and local levels
✅ The fight to defend design-build from restrictive legislation
✅ What’s next for design-build advocacy and how you can get involved

If you’re in the industry, this is an episode you can’t afford to miss.

🔹 See the list of resources from this episode on the Design-Build Delivers Blog.
🔹 Text us your thoughts or questions using the link at the top of this episode description!
🔹 Thanks to our sponsor, U.S. CAD, An ARKANCE Company, for making this conversation possible. Learn more.

Access all our free design-build resources and learn more about Design-Build Done Right® at dbia.org.

DBIA members are shaping the future, one successful collaboration at a time.

Chapters

• 1:45 The Expanding Design-Build Map
• 3:35 From Coast to Coast, PDB Still Stands Out
• 6:40 DBIA’s Role in Advocacy and Policy Change
• 8:51 Sunsetting the Sunset Clause
• 11:50 Spotlight on the Midwest: Minnesota and Nebraska
• 16:09 What’s Going on in Texas?
• 18:39 Models for the Future: Washington State and New York City DDC
• 24:34 The Elmira Problem –– or Bills that Restrict Design-Build
• 28:32 Let’s Speculate Wildly: The Future of Design-Build State/Local Legislation
• 31:26 Activate and Advocate: How You Can Get Involved

Transcript

SPEAKERS

Erin Looney, Vince Campanella, Richard Thomas

Erin Looney  00:07

If you've listened to the design build delivers podcast before you know, we talk a lot about design build legislation, but here's the thing, you like it so we do it for you, and by we, I really mean people who actually know a thing or two about said, design build legislation, like our guests in this episode, Richard Thomas and Vince Campanella, you've heard from both Richard and Vince on the show before, because whether we're talking about expanding design build authority, broadly, tackling progressive design build legislation, or making sure lawmakers don't accidentally or even intentionally throw roadblocks in the way these conversations matter this time we are getting into some of the state level priorities across the country, we'll look at what's moving forward, what's facing hurdles, and how DBIA is making an impact at the state and local levels. Now I mentioned Richard and Vince know their stuff, so you are so lucky, they will be doing most of the talking. These two know this space inside and out, and they're excellent at breaking it down in a way that makes you excited about these laws. Richard Thomas is DBIA go to guy for state and local legislative strategy, and Vince Campanella is a veteran of the industry with decades of experience in alternative project delivery, and Chair of DBIA legislative committee together, they'll walk us through the big wins, tackle the biggest challenges and take a look at what's on the horizon. And don't forget, you can text the show at the link in the episode description. Just click it and share your thoughts. We may even talk about some of them in future episodes. I am Aaron Looney, and this is the design build delivers podcast brought to you by us, CAD and our cons company. Learn more at us. Cad.com/dbia,  I'm gonna kick us off with a story. I had a roommate from France when I lived in Tallahassee, Florida, and she said, I really want to see the whole country while I'm here. And then she asked me, How long would it take to drive from Tallahassee to California? When I told her it was like, 33 hours, she first she didn't want to accept it. She was like, There's no way anybody does that. And I said, Well, you could fly. She said, Oh, okay, how much is that? About? 500 bucks. So she swore at me in French and settled for a road trip to Orlando. So what I'm trying to say here is the US is big, lots of states, lots of territories, lots of different design build needs. So to get the conversation going, let's try to sum up the current state legislative landscape for design build in a kind of bite sized less than 33 hours and $500 flight chunk. We're

Richard Thomas  02:37

continuing to see the expansion of design build authority. You know, where we're kind of filling in those holes at the local level, and some states may not have full authority where they're adding agencies. And we're also seeing another big year for progressive design build most of the expansion we're seeing in the Midwest and southwest regions, but the progressive design bill legislation is really happening coast to coast. The

Vince Campanella  03:03

other thing is, I think we're seeing with some of this new legislation coming out this year, is we're seeing a lot of the stuff that DBIA has been putting out over the last year or two regarding progressive and our model legislation documents. A lot of those are being included in a lot of the legislation. We're starting to see snippets of that. So they're using the documents we've put out there. They're applying some of the components of design build done right? So we're really starting to see reflection of a lot of the work that's been done with DBIA, reflected in a lot of this legislation, which is which is really great to see. So two

Erin Looney  03:35

things are true here. States do seem to learn from each other about what can work and how to tailor their legislation. And two, PDB is still a hot topic. Can you talk a little more about coast to coast PDB legislation? You're really seeing

Richard Thomas  03:50

that at all levels, all sectors. I'll give you an example. On the east coast, the New York budget bill is where typically the action happens. Every year. There's provisions in that bill that would give all of the state agencies that currently have design build authority. They would give them progressive design build authority. There's progressive bills in Washington, South Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, Texas, Maryland, and, like I said, it's all sectors, you know, water, local transportation. Now we're really seeing it all over. The

Vince Campanella  04:27

other good thing to see in a lot of this legislation is a lot of the things we like to push on really hard is some common terminology. Some of the things that we've been again published over the last couple of years, we're starting to see a lot of that stuff being used, which is great because there's starting to be some commonality and some consistency across the nation, and the way people are looking at design build and specifically progressive design building, the QBs type offerings that DBIA has put out, different

Richard Thomas  04:51

terminology, can lead to lawsuits and everything else. So that's really a good thing, and I think it really says a lot about the work Vince and the Committee of the. Doing?

Erin Looney  05:00

Let me ask a quick question that I'm actually surprised with the popularity of the topic. Why I actually haven't ever asked this. But why is it so important to keep growing PDB authority? Why is this such a hot topic? Obviously,

Vince Campanella  05:13

for the last several years, DBIA national has been really focusing heavily on the qualification based selections. When the committee drafted up the model legislation document and even the guide to enact DB legislation, the focus was solely on QBs type selections. So best value and progressive design, build and progressive really the kind of the wave of progression, I think, started here on the West Coast. And just being modest, I think in Washington State, probably more than anything, we were probably a little bit ahead of the curve on that. And I think a lot of what we did here has started to migrate across the country now, but there's been a ton of success with it. People are seeing successful projects. It's great for public owners. It's great for private owners. It's really great for the industry, because the as we used to call it, the cost to admission for progressive is a lot less for design builders and design build teams than the old traditional used to be. You're seeing the wave, and you're seeing success building on success as more public owners and private owners are using it. The name recognition and the methodology of delivering design build is changing, and people want to jump on board, I think, particularly

Richard Thomas  06:18

in the transportation sector, with all of the infrastructure money that came out, projects have just gotten bigger, and they're really looking at this as a as a way to mitigate the risk.

Erin Looney  06:30

I hope there are people who listen to this show who have been going, Why are they always talking about progressive design build? I don't quite get it. Maybe that cleared some of that up for them. So thank you.  Before we do a tour of a few of the states, a little bit more stage setting. What role does DBIA play in advocating for design, build authority at the state level? How do you work with legislators and stakeholders to get these bills passed? First,

Richard Thomas  06:55

we try to determine what are the needs. In some cases, it may be an agency that will seek the legislation because they have a certain project or a certain program that they want to do. Sometimes it's a sector. So what we try to go in is we work with the region, we try to identify stakeholders, we try to collaborate with all of the other folks in the industry and and really try to build a solution that works for everyone?

Vince Campanella  07:22

Yeah. I think one of the things we did again, one of the documents that the legislative committee published early last year, was the guide for enactment of design build legislation. And that was a pretty significant update of an older document, an older primer that had been done back in 2008 through 2011 it really highlighted what Richard's talking about is a lot of the steps and a lot of the strategies that you want to use when you want to try to either, you know, gain design build authority or expand design build authority, things like how to lobbying, for example. And if you look at what California did a couple years ago with SB 706 which, you know, expanded authority significantly in the state of California, that was through a very concerted lobbying effort at the legislative level and through the Western Pacific region, how to build consensus, how to gain sponsors in the legislature, people to sponsor your bills, your legislation, building an industry coalition. Obviously, you want allies in trying to push legislation through, because those allies have friends in the legislature that you want to win over their support, there's a pretty good model out there for everybody to use of practices and strategies that have been very successful in the past. Yeah.

Erin Looney  08:29

SB, 706. Was actually the topic of an episode of the design build delivers podcast in january 2024 if you're listening and you're interested in learning more about that lobbying effort for California, you can go back and listen to DBIA Western Pacifics, Brandon Decker, Chris Sullivan and Marianne O'Brien, as well as the lobbyist himself, Bo Biller, where they will walk you through the process of getting that bill passed.  Now for this segment to come back to the present, we are going to highlight a handful of states that are pretty active right now. So we'll start in Missouri in their push to eliminate the design build sunset clause. Before we walk through the issue, can you give us a brief explanation of what a sunset actually is, and then let's talk about why this issue is so critical, as well as the progress you've made so far. A

Richard Thomas  09:14

sunset is basically an expiration date. Some states, when we're in the process of passing legislation, it becomes a compromise in order to get passage, or in some states, it's a tradition that when you pass a law, that they'll put a sunset or expiration date on it. When we first passed this bill, it was 10 years ago, and just as Vince had said in the last segment, talking about building the coalition, that's exactly what we did in Missouri. We worked with the region. They got some financial support from national and as a partnership, we retained a lobbyist for that session. And it was really, it was kind of about a three, four year project, but it's been 10 years since we had the legislation. If you look at the bill, you. You can see it's obviously it is a compromise. Different folks had different ideas how they wanted to write the bill, but now I'm happy to report that the bill is passed the Senate. It's moving through the house, and I expect that we're going to have passage of this bill within a month. Sunset

Vince Campanella  10:17

clauses are very traditional, even in Washington state, when we passed our original alternative delivery laws back in mid 2000s they came with a sunset clause. We've been able, over the years, to elongate that sunset clause. It still has one, but I think it went from six years, I think we're sitting at 10 years now, which is great, because typically there's a pretty good effort to get those bills reauthorized. There's a lot of reporting. There's a lot of information that the legislature, the accounting offices, want. The longer we can make those sunset clauses, or even eliminating those, the better off and better efforts people can have. And you knock down the folks out there that are trying to eliminate things or restrict them, sunset clauses always tend to give them a little bit more clout in the legislature,

Erin Looney  10:58

so you're building a lot more case studies with a longer sunset clause. So when it comes up again, you can say, look at this track record. Yeah, that's that's

Vince Campanella  11:06

been the practice, and at least that's what I've seen around in the Northwest, where we've had the sunset clauses, Washington has a fairly robust process for all of our alternative delivery projects, so gccm and design build, including progressive design build, and there's a lot of reporting that goes back. Every project has to report specific information back to the legislature, and you're required to do that by contract, and all that goes into a database that then gets analyzed during the reauthorization process. Knock

Richard Thomas  11:34

on wood plus farm, there has not been one sunset that we haven't been able to extend or eliminate so

Erin Looney  11:42

bat in 1000 now that you said that and you put it out in the universe, let's hope it stays that way.

Richard Thomas  11:47

Don't call me. Call Vince. Oh no.

Erin Looney  11:50

Well, we're gonna move north, a little bit, slightly West, actually, and then pretty far north, Nebraska and Minnesota both have bills that could expand design build authority. So what challenges and opportunities do these efforts present for DBIA and for the industry? Minnesota's

Richard Thomas  12:08

the issues we have there this year are rather unique, to make a long story short, we came through the election and then with some other deaths and resignations, a tie in both the House and Senate, and while we were able to work out a power sharing agreement in the Senate that allowed business to continue, they didn't reach such an agreement in the house until literally just a couple weeks ago. So that's really put things in a difficult position. We do have several bills with design bill provisions in there, including the transportation funding bill, and I am cautiously optimistic about that. The real thing, though, in Minnesota that we're hoping for is, traditionally, Minnesota, every other year they would do a big bonding bill. Typically, when they do that bonding bill, we're able to get design build provisions put in, and local governments that have projects in there are able to seek design build authority. So you need 60% to pass that bill, so that's going to be difficult with the partisan ratio being so close. Nebraska is a little bit different bill, and we actually get several of these bills, and every so many years in different states, you might have where they merge departments. What the bill in Nebraska would do, it would merge some departments, but in the process of doing that, would also expand design build authority. So why? We generally don't get involved in the politics of the merging. We've certainly been, you know, we've been encouraging all of the parties involved to use design build more. So we feel pretty good about where we're going there too. We're getting broad utilization of design build in Nebraska.

Vince Campanella  13:54

Well, Richard's talking about here with Minnesota, Nebraska is really kind of the range of issues that DBIA tracks in legislation across the country. I mean, it can be from the variability of trying to expand DB authority in different markets to dealing with just a contentious legislature, and then Nebraska, where those type of things were you just have to be very nimble, I guess, on the advocacy side, to be able to react to things that are going on. Anything in the legislature is fluid. I know in Washington State, we deal with a lot of things, a lot of bills will die, won't make it out of committee, but if they have any kind of dollars or any kind of monetary side to them, they can get resurrected as part of a budget reconciliation bill. So even though things you're fighting or things you're trying to prevent may seemingly die, it doesn't mean they're always dead, and there's always next year. And

Richard Thomas  14:40

you can have bills that half the bill you love half the bill you hate, I think particularly in your funding bills and budget bills where you have a lot of different provisions, those kind of bills we really have to watch close, because they may not be dealing directly with design, build, but let's say they're dealing with the same section into the law. I mean, we have to always look out for unintended consequences, and where folks are trying to fix a problem and they inadvertently cause a problem in another statute. So we got to watch that pretty close, too.

Erin Looney  15:11

So is this just you saying, This is how I protect my job by Don't worry, it'll never be solved.

Richard Thomas  15:17

I suppose I could do that, but I think the politicians are doing a pretty good job in you know, all by themselves. Fair enough,

Vince Campanella  15:23

that's the way politics works. It's probably never going to go away. So you'll always have something to do. There's always something to pay attention to out there, that's for sure.

Erin Looney  15:34

Are you interested in sustainable design and construction practices, but concerned about profitability? US CAD, an Archons company helps forward thinking. ENR, top ranked AEC firms in mitigating risk and driving profit through digitalization, using Autodesk AEC technology to learn more, contact us, cad.com/dbia for a free 30 minute consultation. That's us. Cad.com/dbia Okay. What about Texas? Now? We were just there for the Design Build Conference in Expo in November, and Texas is looking to expand progressive design build authority for water wastewater projects and to kind of pitch again here, while we're on the topic of conferences, it is not too late to join us in National Harbor for the design build for water, wastewater conference, March 19 through 21st to maybe perhaps talk to you both more about this bill if you cross paths. And of course, we can't forget that also means the design build for transportation, aviation is the 17th, 18th and 19th, couple days before water wastewater, dbia.org/conferences, for more info and to register so you can follow Richard and Vince around and ask him a bunch of questions. Now back to this question. How significant is this development in Texas's water wastewater sector, and could this serve as a model for other states? I don't

Richard Thomas  17:03

know if I would call it a model for other states, because I think all politics are local. However, this is a very significant bill, I think, for those that aren't familiar with Texas law for water wastewater projects, the design build is limited to those communities with a population over 100,000 design build projects run in all shapes and sizes. And one of the things that we're finding is we're actually if you look at a lot of your mid size cities are just as likely to be using design build as your big cities are. The region really thinks this is going to be an important bill to expand design build in Texas. This bill would take that 100,000 threshold off. We're expecting to have our first hearing. We're hoping the week after our water conference, and we're working with a lot of other stakeholders there as well. You're going to see this is going to expand progressive design build as well. We also have a transportation bill in Texas. It's not as positive Senate Bill 35 which would limit the number of design build projects. We're yet to see where that's going to land yet. The issue in Texas is, see, I don't want to be negative on Texas. This is big. Well, yeah, and there's a lot of differences between the sectors. Design Build in Texas right now is only used on mega projects, so that, in and of itself, kind of limits it. But I think in your other sectors, I think you're seeing a lot of growth. So

Erin Looney  18:37

Texas is complicated, is what you're telling me.  What about states, local governments, municipalities that have particularly strong design build policies or recent legislation that actually could serve as an example for others, maybe less complicated. I think

Richard Thomas  18:50

the good news is you are seeing a lot of local design build legislation, if you're looking for models, I think probably Washington and California, which is probably have the municipalities have probably done design build the most particularly progressive.

Erin Looney  19:07

Are you just saying that? Because Vince is here? No, I think folks

Richard Thomas  19:11

around the country would tell you that as well. I mean, they were the fierce Steves progressive. And also, I think, too, I would defer to Vince on this is they have a very unique system that they use in Washington too to deliver these projects where they almost have a owners go kind of through a certification process, if you will. Yeah,

Vince Campanella  19:33

well, you know, Washington for quite a while, back in the late 90s and early 2000s they had a group called the procurement expansion committee, or solicitation expansion committee, had kind of a weird name, and the legislature formalized it back in 2006 and they created a board called c part capital projects advisor Review Board. And it's made up back then it was 23 members. Now it's 25 members of various stakeholders, public and private stakeholders from around the. State. So general contractors, specialty contractors, the bonding industry, private industry, folks, which are typically attorneys, every agency within the state that spends capital dollars, K 12, higher ed, cities, counties, hospital districts. Now transit, Sound Transit has a seat. All have representatives on the board, and along with the legislature in the Senate, there's a Senate, there's a Democrat and a Republican from each side on the board. Those are the non voting folks. I was actually on it from 2007 to 2015 when we actually drafted the design bill laws. So cparb essentially advises the legislature on everything related to public works contracting for the most part, and they will, occasionally, they will put a bill out there that the sponsors from cparb, the four legislators will sponsor, and they've got a couple out there this year that are that are all good bills, but under a cparb, they have, there's a group called the project review committee, which is made up of another group of stakeholders, and they actually review and approve each alternative delivery project. So anything that's going gccm or design build has to submit through the PRC to be approved, and they meet every other month. Several years ago, when we first started drafting all the requirements, we allowed public agencies to actually get what we call agency approval. So they can get a three year approval to do design, build and or gccm without having to go through the PRC with individual projects. From my perspective, I get in discussions with people across the country on whether it's really effective. Why do we need a PRC? My position, and I, you know, just being involved in the in legislative committee with Richard over the last several years, it reinforces what my thoughts are, that you're really one or two bad projects away from somebody in the legislature wanting to take authority away. And from my view, the PRC, they're not there to reject projects. They're there to make sure the projects are set up to be successful. They do a very good job of analyzing the projects and making sure that they've got the necessary things, the right teams, the right attitudes, they've, you know, they've, they're not what I call, you know, handing a design, build team of story problem they can't solve. If you look at the numbers, they only don't approve projects, maybe one out of 51, out of 40. And many of those even come back and get approved a second time around. They clean up what their shortcomings were and they get approved. Again, we have a very unique process for doing that. But from our perspective, from my perspective, it really helps keep people doing what we need to do, which is best practices. And a lot of the best practices that we have here in the state of Washington are centered around what DBIA publishes. Good

Erin Looney  22:39

That's fascinating. It's wholly democratic. Very much.

Richard Thomas  22:43

I'd be remiss not to mention New York City either. They haven't even had authority for a decade yet, and you look at how they've embraced it, the project they've done, all their projects are pretty complicated. You really got to hand it to them for how far they've gone in a short period of time, there's a lot of folks out there. They're doing a good job. But, you know, I think the thing that's exciting for me now is just to see every year, there's one or two new bills that are being introduced for local governments. That's not an accident. That's something that we exhibit at the National League of Cities, where we're starting to get more and more members that are local owners. So I think that's the future you're going to start to see, you know, more of that over the next decade.

Erin Looney  23:29

So to put it into perspective, what you were talking about with the New York City and the DDC projects, they recently came out and said that over 42 projects using Design Build New York City saves $1.4 billion and 50 years. So if you like numbers, those are pretty impressive. Think of the

Richard Thomas  23:52

number of projects you're going to be able to do with that. Maybe you're able to add on to some project, something you didn't think you'd be able to do. So fun. No,

Vince Campanella  24:00

that's great. That's exactly why progressive and design build in general are working so well. The results are there, and this is the kind of stuff that builds momentum in state and local governments wanting to expand authority or want to gain authority. One of the things I we want to work on as a committee this next cycle is developing a list of public owners that you know want to be advocates and help other public owners try to get legislation through. And what Tom and his group are doing in New York City is indicative of what we'd like to see from public owners, with the amount of success that they're having and just their huge advocacy for design build and design build done right?

Erin Looney  24:34

This is all great. We've been talking about all these good things, all these hopeful things, a lot of what's going on with design build across the US, they're focused on more design build authority. Better design, build authority. What about the flip side? Though? Are there any states where we're playing defense? Talk a little about what it's like for us to have to fight for design build from behind the eight ball

Richard Thomas  24:56

first? The short answer is yes. There are some states where. Defense in Texas, Senate Bill 35 and Senate Bill 1655, right now the Texas D O T can only do six projects per biennium, which is a two year period. It used to be two, so now there's legislation that would bring that back down to two. Again. It's also limited to projects over 150 million. We did have a minor bill in Virginia that would have restricted local governments. We were able to take care of that pretty easily. What we're starting to see more and more, isn't so much bills that are outright prohibitions on design build. But I would call it loving design build to death now that design build is popular, folks like to put things onto our bills. There's a handful of states where we know that any design build legislation is going to have labor provisions, for example, put on it. I'm not pro or against labor, I'm just those are things that are put on so it gives folks that you know maybe agnostic about design build, but they have strong feelings about labor issues, or it may be other regulations that are added to the bill. Mississippi is an example where we get a lot of different provisions put into bills. But I think the good news is that was we really other than the Texas bill right now, we're not seeing anything real nefarious that we're really concerned is going to restrict design,

Vince Campanella  26:26

build authority we're just talking about is right on. I tell people this, regardless of how you vote or how you feel about certain things, you got to pay attention to. What's in these bills. We talk about it when we do presentations at national about the legislative committee. Is at some point you have to play defense. The closer you get to gaining across the country, full DB authority and progressive DB across the country, the more we need to continually monitor legislation for restricting the authority or like, like Richard said, you know, loving db to death. That's the stuff you got to be careful of. And there's sometimes people read the title of bills and they sound very innocent, yet there can be added language into those bills that are very restrictive. They can, they can do a lot of damage. And so you've really got to pay attention to what's going on. But there's one thing legislators like to do, is if they want something, they'll find a way to get it in there, to get it into a bill somewhere. And so you've got to pay attention to things. You got to make sure that you read things thoroughly and or have good folks within the region, legislative committees within the regions that are paying attention to what's going on in the legislature and reporting to national when they need some assistance.

Richard Thomas  27:33

And it's some of these peripheral issues that can become the obstacle to let's take New York for example. Obviously, in New York City, any project done in New York City is going to be done with organized labors. There's going to be a project labor agreement. But when you get an upstate New York, or it's a more of a non union environment, the problem is, is you have legislation. You know, most of the bills in that you'll have in New York are going to have PLA language in them. So while that's not an issue for us, per se, we don't get involved in labor issues. For a lot of contractors in upstate New York, if it's design build with the project labor agreement, they're less excited about it. Those are some of the complex issues that we have to deal with as well as we navigate these waters.

Erin Looney  28:19

So you said loving design build to death, and I'm not going to lie, gonna lie, all I could see was Elmira Duff from Tiny Toons squeezing animals with all her love, and they're like wiggling out of her arms.  Now we're gonna get into the segment I call let's speculate wildly, but we're not actually gonna speculate wildly. We're going to look instead at some reasonable expectations and talk about a little actionable advice. So first looking ahead to the not so distant future, what's on the horizon for design build, legislation broadly, and are there any major concerns or opportunities we should keep an eye on? I think

Richard Thomas  28:56

this is going to be a very good year for design build and DBIA, I feel very confident about the budget bill in New York, even though Minnesota is a mess. I think the I think we're going to get our provisions done there. The Tennessee bill, which is a progressive design bill that is moving very quickly through, the Missouri bill, is going to go through. So I feel it's going to be a good year. Looking forward, though, I think you're going to continue to see progressive expansion, and I really think you're going to see a lot more done at the local level also too. I think with states all over the country, like the federal government, they're probably looking at reductions in workforce just because of the budget constraints. I think that is going to lend itself better to design build to where you have limited staff. You know, if we continue to deliver the tools, deliver the education, where we are, I really, I don't see a lot of obstacles in our way moving forward. I

Vince Campanella  29:54

agree with Richard. I think, you know, the momentum is there right now with the success that design build has had across the country. Country with the notoriety that cities like like New York City is getting with their building program, those type of things, people notice those things, and they want to jump on board. They want to find out what's creating that success, and then they want to be part of that. They want to try to figure out how they can make it happen, either in their state or their local jurisdiction. Looking locally here at Washington, one of the big things that's happening here is there's actually a bill in our legislature right now to to expand progressive to the Department of Transportation for state projects here in Washington, I think the bill is set up right now to actually have them become part of the capital projects board. They're not part of it now. They actually have their own procurement laws that are separate from the progressive and the design build laws we have right now, but that's an outcome of having some of their big projects, some of the big, mega projects on the west side of the state were bid, and were bid significantly over budget. So the state's reaction to that is to figure out, okay, what we've got other projects that are working great. What are they doing right? And we can apply here, and it's progressive design build, which would be a huge move forward for the state of Washington.

Richard Thomas  31:01

I think there's three specific bills pending right now dealing with specific projects that specifically say, let's use design build, or progressive design build. That really gives you an idea of legislators recognizing that project delivery does make a difference, and when they need to get something delivered on time and on budget, they know where to go.

Erin Looney  31:26

After listening to all of this, maybe somebody is inspired. They want to come take up the fight, whether they're living in a place where design build is already moving in the right direction, like Washington, or even somewhere where it's maybe not quite caught on yet. You know, they're jazzed. They're into this legislation thing. Because everybody knows legislation is exciting. It's not, but design build is, sorry, Richard, and so now they're asking how they can support design build policy at the state level where they live. So what could you tell them they could do to get involved and make an impact?

Richard Thomas  31:58

Vince chairs the Legislative Committee, which is a great place to get started. We have pending legislation for every region, and all of the bills on our website, you can get involved with your region. And I would really recommend, when you go to the website and you you see a bill that interests you or inspires you, send an email and try to get that bill passed, or if it's a bad bill, try to get it blocked, because it really does make a difference. Think about it like this. Most legislators, if they get an email or a letter from a person, they assume there's at least 10 other people that think the same way. So it's important. If it's something that you want to get out there, you know, you got to follow up. You got to let legislators know that it's important. And they can also send, if you have any questions or concerns, send it to me at R thomas@dbia.org, and also to all the tools that Vince was talking about earlier with our state statute, report, our model legislation, all of those things are free at the bookstore@dbia.org,

Erin Looney  33:07

now, Vince, I'm going to let you have the last word, but before I do that, thank you, Richard, for the plug for those things. And you did keep talking about the website to get people directly to where they need to be. It's dbia.org/state now, Vince, send us home. I would just

Vince Campanella  33:22

reiterate what Richard said there. I think that the best thing you can do is get involved at the local level, at the region, at the chapter level for DBIA, everything happens at the grassroots of things, that's where anything that's significant for DBIA national is going to come through the region. And so get involved in the regional level. Every region should have a legislative or a legal committee that you can become part of and and do that at the chapter level as well, because the more you can be aware of what's going on at your state and local level and inform others of those things, the more we're going to build coalitions, and we're going to build advocates, and we're going to build a larger group of people around the country that are paying attention to the things that you need to to make sure that we protect design build and advance design build the way DBIA needs it to be done, and

Erin Looney  34:09

that is the perfect last word. Sure. Legislation may not be the flashiest topic, but when it comes to shaping the future of design build, it is one of the most important so whether we're talking about states expanding progressive design build, municipalities refining their procurement policies or efforts to push back against restrictive measures. This is the work that makes a difference, and if I may say so, Richard and Vince bringing up flash. Now, if today's conversation got you thinking, check out the list of resources from this episode on the design build delivers blog at dbia.org/blog and if you want to become part of the action, check out dbia.org/state to see what's happening near you. And if you didn't get enough legislation in today's chat, look for a bonus episode later this month where Vincent Richard talk about how activity at the federal level could impact design build at. State and local level, as I mentioned earlier in the show as well. DBIA is design build for transportation and aviation and design build for water wastewater. Conferences are just over the horizon, March 17 through 21st in National Harbor, Maryland. It's the perfect chance to follow Richard and Vince around and pepper them with your design build, legislation questions, or, as I'm sure they'd prefer, it's a perfect opportunity for you to make meaningful connections with industry leaders and share experiences that could even help shape future design build policies. Find all the details at dbia.org/conferences and if you enjoyed this conversation on the design build delivers podcast, subscribe so you don't miss an episode or a bonus episode review, so others can find the show and text us so we know what you want to talk about. Use the link in the episode description to shoot us a message. A huge thank you to Vince Campanella and Richard Thomas for their insights, to Fred Yi for making the show sound good to you, for listening and to us, CAD and archives company for their continued support of the design build delivers podcast. Learn more at usc.com/dbia.