Less Risk, More Value with Alternative Delivery feat. Doug Gransberg

Ep. 8 |
January 17, 2022

Our seventh guest on the 4M Utility Strategy Podcast is Dr. Douglas Gransberg, an advocate for early collaboration and risk management to solve our complex infrastructure projects.

Douglas Gransberg, Ph.D., PE, M.ASCE is the president of Gransberg & Associates, Inc., a management consulting firm that specializes in structuring scope, cost, and schedule risk on complex infrastructure projects. His firm has worked on mega-projects throughout the US, as well as in Canada, Latin American, the Mideast, Europe, and Australasia. He is a retired US Army Corps of Engineers officer and an Emeritus Professor of Construction Engineering at the University of Oklahoma. His firm is currently providing risk management and alternative project delivery services to public agencies and private companies in California, Minnesota, Oregon, Texas, and Virginia, including nationwide infrastructure risk management contracts for the US Department of the Interior and Amtrak. He is the author of the NCHRP report Utility Coordination Using Alternative Contracting Methods, which provides guidelines for developing utility strategies for complex infrastructure projects.‍

Our conversation dives into the challenges we face to maintain and improve our current infrastructure, and how we can change our approach for better structural, financial, and social project outcomes. Dr. Gransberg talks about moving from design-centric to construction-centric planning through alternative project delivery. By bringing together project owners, designers, and contractors early in the process, we can address the huge risk factors posed by utilities to construction processes and minimize them or avoid them entirely. That also means rethinking our terms of efficiency and liability so that the overall project can be delivered more successfully.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3

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