NYC needs the right tools to build our way back

New York faces several overlapping generational challenges: economic, as our central business districts find their footing for the work-from-home era; and existential, as the reality of climate change encroaches on our shores and comes up into our basements, streets, and subway tunnels through the pipes below.

The good news is that each of these challenges can be meaningfully addressed to protect future generations by building much-needed infrastructure improvements today. New York Building Congress member-professionals who will build these projects — the lathers and steel workers, architects and engineers, developers, and planners — have the skills to tackle these challenges.

The bad news is that we aren’t giving them the tools to do the job. Even in this heightened context, major civic investments run by the city still require arcane processes that take too much time, too much money, and do not meet the moment with the urgency it requires.

But there is something we can do in Albany to change a potentially tragic trajectory: get capital process reform passed at last, as part of a suite of recommendations to hasten infrastructure delivery.

Here’s how it works today:

When the city bids out a big project, for the most part it has to separate the design from the building process. Conducting two separate procurements means more time and more money, when the city has neither to spare.

When the design is finalized, the builders, often brought on in the third act and almost always hired exclusively on price, may find that it’s impossible, too expensive, or both.

And we go back to the beginning in a brutal, high-stakes game of chutes and ladders.

To be fair, these procedural limitations are the result of good intentions gone awry: initially aimed at reducing corruption and giving everyone an equal footing into the lucrative position of doing business with the city.

But those positives are not without a downside: Often, less-resourced Minority and Women-owned Business Enterprises can’t compete in a landscape where the lowest price wins. Many don’t operate at the same scale as larger firms, meaning things as simple as materials cost more. And without vast war chests, they can’t operate speculatively until government is able to pay.

The private sector — and quasi-public agencies like the MTA and the Economic Development Corp. — can use alternative delivery methods like construction manager build or progressive design build, onboarding building contractors much earlier so that they’re at the table from the beginning, saving money, time and unfortunate 11th-hour surprises.

It’s time to give New York City these same tools.

New York City has been able to pilot one version of alternative delivery — design build — on a few projects like the Shirley Chisholm Recreation Center in Flatbush. It’s years ahead of schedule with more than 40% M/WBE contracted work.

But now it’s time to use these tools not only for rec centers, but also for addressing coastal resiliency and inland flooding, helping our Central Business Districts re-establish themselves for a new live-work era.

Another key tool that helps our colleagues in construction meet the moment. Joint bidding, which coordinates public projects with private utilities like Con Edison and National Grid under a single contract.

This has been standard practice since 2004 and is about to expire.

The impact could be massive, and losing such an essential tool due to nothing more than an arbitrary expiration date is no way to help New Yorkers

At the start of construction, the contractor opens up the street. Even with the best site planning and coordination possible, they often quickly find surprises: for example, the gas, steam, or internet utility, aren’t where anyone expected.

When an unexpected obstacle is found, all work stops while the contractor negotiates with multiple specialty contractors to coordinate a complex dance that will allow the work to continue.

In the meantime, costs mount. The city loses a year or more on every project that doesn’t use joint bidding; that’s upwards of $100 million per year, leaving taxpayers to bear an unnecessary and easily preventable burden.

And Albany holds the pen on all of it.

We’d hoped that alternative delivery and joint bidding would be in Gov. Hochul’s budget earlier this year along with a slate of other recommendations that would help speed infrastructure delivery; they weren’t. Now, we look toward a legislative solution this spring. Joint bidding expires this year; Albany must approve an extension.

Our state elected leaders to act now. Give New York City the proper tools to meet this critical moment. It is way past time to ensure a more efficient and affordable future.

Scissura is president & CEO of the New York Building Congress.