Enhanced Design Build-An Innovative System to Procure a Hospital Project

Building works in Hong Kong have been mainly delivered in a traditional manner where clients appoint consultants to act on their behalf to produce design and supervise the construction phase. The increasing complexity of buildings, the need to reduce design and construction periods, and the need to improve the project performance have brought pressure to find other ways to deliver the project. In the last decade, “design and build” procurement method has been used extensively both worldwide and in Hong Kong to help dealing with the problems associated with the traditional system. The objective of this paper is to report the findings from a case study of a hospital project which adopted an “enhanced design and build” form of building procurement. The hospital project requires a rapid project delivery and a high degree of public accountability. Twenty project participants representing different organisational interests were interviewed and requested to complete a questionnaire to aid the assessment of the procurement system. The results were put under critical analysis. The perceived advantages and shortcomings of the procurement system were assessed from the perspectives of the client, client’s consultants, contractor, contractor’s consultants, and contractor’s subcontractors.