On April 15, 1996, the Utah Department of Transportation (UDOT) requested approval from the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) to use design-build for the I-15 Corridor Reconstruction Project under the provisions of SEP-14. By utilizing repetitive bridge design and components bridge construction, productivity was greatly increased. The cost of the proposal for the base price plus construction and maintenance options was $1.352 billion, making this the largest single highway contract (traditional or design-build) in the country. As a part of the requirements of SEP-14, this project had an evaluation component throughout the duration of the project. Annual evaluation reports are available since 1998.
As part of the evaluation of the I-15 Design/Build Project, the UDOT wanted to examine the use of performance specifications on the project. The UDOT had not used performance specifications on previous projects so their use was new to the Department. The 2000 evaluation report presents an analysis of the performance specifications used on the I-15 Design/Build Project through the end of the year 2000. The report is based upon interviews conducted with key UDOT staff members, their consultants, one representative of the contractor's team, and a review of the specifications included in the request for proposal (RFP) and used for the project.
The UDOT decided to use performance specifications for the following reasons:
∙ Provide flexibility to the contractor to propose new methods and ideas for the design and construction of the project;
∙ Provide flexibility to the contractor to meet the time, cost, and quality constraints of the project;
∙ Assign appropriate responsibility and risk to the contractor for design and construction means and methods; and
∙ Allow the contractor to optimize its resources for the project and better match with its capabilities and let the designers' design to the strengths of the contractor.
To accomplish this, the UDOT established a review team to manage and direct the development of the specifications. Several teams were assigned specification sections to write for the RFP. The teams were led by UDOT staff personnel and consisted of UDOT staff, FHWA staff, consultants hired by UDOT, industry and association experts, and academia specialists. Drafts of the specifications were released to the three short-listed contractors during the RFP process. The contractors were given opportunities to comment on the content. As comments were received the specifications in some cases were revised, finalized, and released to the contractors in the final RFP.
As a result of the comments received from the contractors, changes were made to the specifications. One significant change was the maintenance period required in the contract. Originally UDOT had intended to require an extended warranty for performance of up to 20 years. Based on comments received from contractors, UDOT came to the conclusion that the 20-year warranty was not feasible. UDOT modified the requirements to include up to ten years of maintenance of specific elements by the contractor.