CM-at-risks as a highway construction delivery system in the southeastern United States

Abstract

The traditional system of design-bid-build has long been the principal delivery system for horizontal construction; it has been employed by all the transportation departments in the United States for almost a century. The shift toward design-build (DB) as a time saving method has been successful in many ways, but use of the system has exposed some disadvantages in the last decade. Construction-manager-at-risk (CMR) is a delivery system often employed in vertical construction, but transportation agencies have recently begun to use it for horizontal construction. The Departments of Transportation (DOT) of eleven states in the southeastern United States were interviewed in this study. The focus was on each DOT’s experience and satisfaction with the DB delivery method, as well as their experiences, knowledge, and legal status of the CMR method. Florida was the only state of the eleven that has used CMR on horizontal projects. CMR has also been used as the delivery system on some municipal and county highway projects in Florida.