Changing needs, enhanced standards of care, a focus on health and safety, and an emphasis on rehabilitation are leading to a shift in the way correctional facilities are managed.
These nuanced and complex facilities bring together a wide range of essential services within a confined, controlled, safe and efficient environment, and must meet the evolving standards and requirements of incarcerated residents, operations staff, and correctional officers. Owners are in a challenging position of addressing a multitude of factors while staying on budget and maximizing tax dollars.
The complexity inherent in building new confinement facilities has influenced forward-thinking owners to select a collaborative design and construction team early in the process. Collaboration, coordination, and working toward shared goals are critical for successful outcomes in the construction and renovation of these facilities—and partnering early remains the best way to achieve them.
The Traditional Method
Using the traditional method of design-bid-build, architects begin design as part of the first phase before construction teams came on board, working in silos without input from specialty trades and contractors who are in touch with current market conditions. A traditional bid project requires the owner and design team to produce a perfect set of construction drawings, which is very difficult with the speed of change in our industry. Once architects finish developing the design, contractors then bid on material and labor costs based on the drawings and specifications.
With a design completed without any input about constructability, this traditional method can sometimes create a contentious environment. “Change orders are the typical method to correct issues with any items missed in the construction documents,” said Mike Comer, Vice President of a construction company. “Because the contract was awarded to the lowest price, most changes required additional cost to be covered by the owner and typically with added change order fees.”
Proven Value of Early Partnership
The collaboration between all parties before the design begins is emerging as a preferred design and construction method. By partnering early and seeking input, goals, and expectations from all parties rather than a siloed low-bid system, facility owners and user groups can collaborate with the design and construction team to create value throughout the entire process. When the contractor and architect are brought in around the same time, the team can work hand-in-hand, continually pricing materials and availability in real time and offering time- and money-saving alternatives before the project gets too far down the road. This format encourages owners and user groups—the people and staff responsible for operating the facility, interacting with incarcerated persons, and maintaining the facility—to be involved in design and construction considerations.
When these considerations are taken into account early, the result is a facility that not only meets a client’s needs but also one that stays within budget because the design is tailored to individual requirements and cost limitations. “Early collaboration allows the collective team to design to the budget and make educated decisions about priorities, tradeoffs, first and long-term costs—and then prioritize items that matter most,” said Comer.
On two recent projects—Greene County Detention Center in Springfield, Missouri, and Lansing Correctional Facility Reconstruction for the state of Kansas—the team’s cohesiveness allowed challenges to be resolved through creative problem-solving without change orders. A willingness to work together with the end goal always in mind led to creative solutions such as prefabricated rear chassis and precast modular cells, which maximized the offsite prefabrication efficiencies and produced huge schedule and budget savings. These savings were then reinvested by the clients to expand the scope of their projects.
The head Lieutenant for the United Metropolitan Forensic Crime Laboratory "walked" every room in the new building and gave feedback for the final design after experiencing the layout virtually.
Partnering begins before pen hits paper via collaborative meetings where the owner, user groups, designers, and contractors discuss the owner’s must-haves, challenges, and objectives for the project. The shared understanding of what success looks like for each partner influences team decisions and behaviors from top to bottom, beginning to end. When trade partners are brought to the table early to share their expertise and lessons learned from similar projects, the ripple effect is felt throughout the project.
With the added challenges of today’s supply chain issues, long manufacturing timeline, potential shipping delays, competition for product, and the tight labor market, early decision-making (when it can positively affect the project and offer price and scheduling certainty), ordering materials, and coordinating installation are critical.
Enhancing the Process with Technology
As technology advances, so do the opportunities for project teams to leverage it and positively affect results. Teams are increasingly introducing emerging technology to give correctional facility owners and end-users a “look” at the design before it is finalized. By using virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) technology, team members and end-users can virtually walk through the building, better determining how it suits their needs as well as giving them a chance to offer input that could ultimately affect the design and overall usability of the final facility.
“VR and AR encourage active involvement while allowing people to virtually walk through the building and experience the functionality of the sally ports, security systems, intake, transfer, and other facets of jail operations,” said Virtual Design and Construction Manager Sarah Paul. “This experience can inform both big and small design changes, as well as help train staff before the building is complete and turned over.”
During a three-story expansion to the Minnehaha County Jail in South Dakota, a physical mock-up of the cell layout and equipment wasn’t possible due to long lead times for detention equipment. The team developed a 3-D virtual mock-up, which allowed the warden to approve cell layouts and equipment prior to construction. “I reviewed each cell fixture submittal to ensure our model reflected everything correctly, all the way down to the number of fasteners holding a shelf to the wall,” said Paul.
The owner was so impressed with the technology that they scheduled a second session to allow the staff to see the new configuration of rooms and begin training on new intake procedures—something owners and end-users often have difficulty visualizing from two-dimensional drawings. “The value is incredible; you can see everything, including spatial comparisons to what we currently had. We were also able to make sure that the flow and what we have designed for that next part, the major part of this expansion, is correct. So this is very helpful,” said the Minnehaha County Sheriff.
Virtual Design & Construction Manager Sarah Paul oversees a virtual reality session to get owner and staff feedback of the design for a new county jail.
Staff at the Minnehaha County Jail “walk through” the planned expansion using virtual reality technology.
A Collaborative Future
From ensuring optimal facilities that increase operational efficiency and meet the evolving needs of staff and residents alike to offering a creative solutions, collaboration through Design-Build or Construction Manager at Risk offers more flexibility and maximizes both temporal and monetary savings—and studies point to an uptick in these project delivery methods in the U.S. as a preferred way to increase speed to market of these critical facilities.
A 2021 report commissioned by Design-Build Institute of America and performed by FMI Corporation, a leading consulting and investment banking firm dedicated to serving companies working within the built environment facility, states that owners are continuing to experience increasingly expedited schedules, often with fewer in-house resources. “Like the 2018 results, market participants consistently identified delivery schedule as a key factor influencing delivery method selection,” said Beichley. “Both increasing project complexity and delivery schedule align well with the benefits provided by design-build. It is estimated that 47% of the construction put in place over the next five years will be a design-build delivery while design-bid-build is projected to represent only 15% of the volume of work constructed in the U.S.”
As correctional, detention, and justice facilities are faced with unique challenges, counties, states, and cities will benefit from collaboration and shared knowledge across varied perspectives. Factors such as safety, security wellness, and operational efficiencies can be optimized while staying within budget. This creation of long-term value is one of the biggest reasons collaborative delivery methods are gaining popularity over the traditional hard-bid approach.
With design-build on the upswing in the justice market, the impact will only be amplified by technology, especially as teams find new ways to use it. “The results we’ve seen during AR/VR ‘walk throughs’ are incredible,” said Comer. “Not only are we finding a new way to collaborate with owners, but the advancements in technology have created efficiencies, allowing us to further refine the process and outcomes that will benefit all stakeholders now and in the future of justice facility construction.”
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Angela Talbot is VP of Client Solutions at JE Dunn Construction, a national general contractor. Her focus is on identifying opportunities to build updated justice-related facilities such as courthouses, detention and containment centers, juvenile justice centers, and behavioral health facilities, and then bringing together a collaborative team who will maximize scope and deliver on client needs. She holds an undergraduate business administration degree from Southern Utah University and an MBA and services marketing degree from Arizona State University. She can be contacted at angela.talbot@jedunn.com.