City of Seattle

Through this article, Jerry Waldron draws a compelling analogy between public works contracting and American football. He argues that public works projects can benefit from adopting strategies similar to those used in football, such as simplifying project scopes, fostering early collaboration between contractors and public owners and preparing for budget escalations over multi-year projects. He highlights the complexity and challenges of public works contracting, from the intricate project specifications that often create confusion to the unrealistic expectations placed on contractors to deliver results without adequate preparation.

Now that I’ve caught your attention, my goal is to provide strategies for converting the historical definition of public works to public and partner works by the end of this article. Potential challenges and mitigation strategies that I propose as they relate to public works scope, schedule and budget are:

Scope: American football is based on Xs and Os, which develop the offensive and defensive strategies for the football team. The more complex the playbook, the more difficult it becomes for the team to execute the play. Many experts and authors prepare the project specifications and design plans, which unfortunately leads to conflicting agendas placing the project delivery at risk. Public owners attempt to mitigate these challenges by creating special provisions or bid items specifically for the project. Public owners then need to be mindful not to create hundreds of project special provisions or bid items, which will lead to frustration & confusion for the bidding contractors. If only public works contracts were not complex and run the ball when you are at the 1-yard line.

Schedule: The NFL is composed of three main scheduled activities: training camp for six weeks, the regular season for 17 weeks, and playoffs for five weeks. Public works are also composed of three main schedule activities—the design team developing a bid package for years, the contract estimator preparing a bid for the work for a few weeks, and the contractor providing the labor & equipment after the contract is executed for defined contract time. A project scheduling professional or case law will explain why 3-week lookahead schedules are not substitutes for updated critical-path-method (CPM) schedules. The public owner expects that the contractor will provide a Superbowl-contending team the moment the contract is signed without a training camp or regular season.

An approach to mitigate schedule risk is for the day-today contractor personnel who are to perform the work to have a pre-submittal meeting with the public owners prior to any submittal or RFI being sent. The purpose of the pre-submittal meeting is to provide a partnering session between the contractor and public owner to introduce themselves, review project constraints, define what success looks like and just as important; define the accepted format to be paid for work performed.

To build a ‘Superbowl Championship’ public works project, consistency in specifications, early team-building communication and preparing for cost escalation are essential strategies

If only public works, offensive and defensive personnel would consistently have a training camp so that they could build team comradery before the construction phase. Should that not be common practice for the qualified lowest bidding contractor and public owner to kick off a partnering relationship versus the adversarial relationship of anxiously waiting for the first change order?

Budget: All NFL teams have the flexibility to create a roster. However, it must be under the budgeted salary cap. In 1995, the NFL salary cap was $37 million, and in 2023, the salary cap increased to $225 million, which is an average increase of approximately 7.5 percent per year. The development of public works funds also has the same flexibility where fund sources can be from taxes, grants, low-interest loans, etc. The biggest hurdle for the public owner is that very early in the project, the project manager must present a single number to the political authority, taxpayers, public work trust committees, etc. Seattle Public Utilities took about a decade to deliver the ship canal water quality project (SCWQP) at an estimated cost of $650 million.

Imagine that you are the SCWQP project manager, and you are to tell the world a single number to deliver the project, but it is frowned upon if you are a dollar over the project budget or collected more than required from ratepayers, placing other projects on hold. This is why in public works contracting, the liquidated damages for project delays are enforced and change orders require a significant amount of paperwork & process. If only public works behaved similarly to the NFL salary cap with agreed-upon escalation increases defined by a consumer price index.

So, what lessons can be taken to build a Superbowl Championship Capital Public Works project?

 1. Owners try to be as consistent as possible with your Division 1 specifications for all projects.

 2. Contractors engage with the Owner’s design team on what makes the project unique and immediately establish teambuilding lines of communication with the Owner’s construction management team prior to the first submittal.

3. Owners and Contractors need to prepare for escalation for multiple-year projects.

 I look forward to reading about public works project teams having championship ribbon-cutting parades versus the strains of million-dollar claim settlements.