Integrating Context Sensitive Solutions into a Design-Build Program: An Experiment by the Minnesota Department of Transportation

摘要

In 2003, the Minnesota Department of Transportation (MnDOT) developed a uniquemethod of integrating Context Sensitive Solutions (CSS) into its Design-Build Program by usinga process it called Visual Quality Management. The name is somewhat of a misnomer, implyingthat the process is only about generating an aesthetically appealing project. This it does (orrather, attempts) but merely as a result of a set of requirements that the Contractor must follow todevelop a project that is not only visually acceptable to the community but supported by it.Indeed the process was not as concerned with visual quality per se as it was with the method thatresulted in a project that the public thought aesthetically agreeable. The method was based onthe CSS principles and practices (particularly the inclusion of stakeholders, the use ofinterdisciplinary design teams, the adoption of multi-modal solutions, the solving of associatedsocial, economic, environmental problems, and the creation of a safe, efficient, and effectivetransportation system) that MnDOT had adopted as a business model. Visual QualityManagement was actually a method for measuring the conformance to the project’s visualquality goals that had been generated using the principles of CSS. In other words, VisualQuality Management was a method for measuring the results of a CSS process.This process incorporated stakeholders and the issues that concern them into how acontractor is allowed to design and construct a transportation project under Design-Build. Itrequired the successful bidder to develop a Visual Quality Management Plan which outlined howthe Contractor would define and mitigate visual impacts; the responsibilities and authority of aVisual Quality Manager and a Visual Quality Review Committee; and a process that theContractor would use to engage that committee in developing a Visual Quality Manual. Themanual established the criteria for developing context sensitive solutions for fifteen designelements that composed a transportation project’s visual environment. It also documented a setof conformance measurements used by the contractor’s own Visual Quality Manager to accept orreject the products produced by the Contractor during design and construction. Finally theVisual Quality Manual defined how any remedial action required to correct non-conformancewould be implemented by the Contractor or ultimately, MnDOT. This innovative process,although formulated, was never fully implemented by MnDOT. It could become, however, ahypothesis for how to integrate CSS into a Design-Build program that requires some willingdepartment of transportation to test.