Keeping Small Jobs Small With Alternative Project Delivery

From schools to parks to courthouses and beyond, Job Order Contracting from Gordian is a great tool to help the public sector finish high-quality construction work efficiently and keep small jobs small.

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small jobs Job Order Contracting Gordian

Project owners and their representatives in the public sector often find themselves putting a variety of smaller jobs out to bid. Roof repairs. Equipment replacements. New flooring installation. Bathroom renovations. These small jobs sound like the easiest ones to finish, but the opposite is often true: The small jobs frequently end up causing the biggest headaches. Here’s why.

small jobs Job Order Contracting GordianEven the small jobs — the quick alterations and renovations — may be legally required to be put out to bid for a given period, depending on an entity’s threshold. And as owners wait for proposals to come in and take the time to comb through them, conditions at the facility may deteriorate further. Immediately, that small job has gotten a little bigger. Even after a proposal is selected, contractor commitments to other construction jobs can cause further delays, making our small job larger still. Once work begins, contractors may find unexpected issues behind the walls or underground. It’s a construction job, after all; surprises happen. Now change orders need to be negotiated and managed. What was once a small job now takes up an enormous amount of administrative time and a bigger chunk of the budget.

But project owners can keep small jobs small with a Job Order Contracting (JOC) program. JOC is an alternative project delivery method that and allows government agencies to complete multiple projects under one, competitively-awarded contract. With JOC, an agency can repair a cracked sidewalk one month and remodel bathrooms the next using one contract pursuant to state and local statutes. Given this flexibility and speed, it’s no wonder that local and state agencies around the country have been turning to Job Order Contracting from Gordian to complete a variety of different projects.

In Ohio, a county sewage treatment plant was brought into EPA compliance accessed Gordian JOC through a cooperative purchasing network. In California, a youth detention center renovated its facilities on an aggressive timeline with Gordian’s JOC solution. The Washington, D.C. Housing Authority transformed a marshy field into a recreational area using Job Order Contracting from Gordian. These stories are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to public agency success using Job Order Contracting. How is JOC from Gordian able to complete a variety of projects with such efficiency? The answer lies in the process.

Gordian develops a Construction Task Catalog® (CTC), containing local Unit Prices for more than 275,000 common construction Tasks. A pool of vetted contractors bids the catalog by applying an Adjustment Factor to each Unit Price. If a Task costs $100 and the contractor’s coefficient is 1.07, the owner will pay $107 for that contractor to complete one Unit of that Task. When an owner awards a contract, the contractor and a Gordian representative perform a Joint Scope Walk to develop a Detailed Scope of Work. The Joint Scope Walk also provides a chance to identify potential problems ahead of when work begins and find opportunities for value engineer. The owner’s Gordian rep reviews the Price Proposal before the contractor submits it to make sure it’s complete. The owner then accepts the Price Proposal and issues a Job Order. All of this can be accomplished in a matter of days instead of weeks. Oversight from Gordian tends to reduce change orders once work begins, but when they do happen, they are handled quickly. This is because every Task is priced from the CTC, meaning work does not have to stop for negotiations. Simply put, Job Order Contracting keeps construction projects moving.

The breadth and depth of the CTC combined with Gordian’s oversight and expertise make Job Order Contracting a natural fit for the various small jobs that often get backlogged at a public agency. But that’s not the only benefit of Gordian’s JOC solution. JOC programs are managed on an intuitive, user-friendly software platform that provides transparency and auditability. Plus, Gordian Cloud captures all communications between the awarded contractor and the project owner in one place, so no important information gets lost in an inbox.

From schools to parks to courthouses and beyond, Job Order Contracting from Gordian is a great tool to help the public sector keep finish high-quality construction work efficiently and keep small jobs small.