Identifying problems encountered when contracting with the Naval Facilities Engineering Command.

160 Pages·1991·4 MB·en_US

by  Whitehurst, Donald E.

Identifying Problems Encountered
When Contracting With the
Naval Facilities Engineering Command
By
Donald E. Whitehurst
Submitted in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for a
Master of Science in Civil Engineering
from the
University of Washington
Autumn 1991
T254005
6/
University of Washington
Abstract
Identifying Problems Encountered
When Contracting With The
Naval Facilities Engineering Command
by Donald E. Whitehurst
Chairperson of the Professor Jimmie W. Hinze
Supervisory Committee: Department of Civil Engineering
Problems encountered by contractors when contracting with the Naval
Facilities Engineering Command were investigated. The purpose of this
research was to identify and investigate what contractors perceive to be
barriers to achieving the goal of constructing quality facilities for the Navy, on
time and for a fair price.
The finding are that contractors are generally satisfied with the quality,
ability, and fairness of NAVFACs personnel, the bidding format, payment
policy, and emphasis on safety. Contractors are generally dissatisfied with
NAVFACs
timeliness in conforming contract modifications, providing
timely directions on field problems, and clarifying bid document ambiguities.
Many contractors also believe NAVFAC lacks sufficient knowledge and
awareness of the construction business. Smaller contractors tended to be
more dissatisfied with NAVFAC contracts than did larger contractors.
Contractors also consider NAVFACs value engineering program to be
ineffective and consider the contractor quality control program (CQC-West) to
be too costly, too subjective, and overly restrictive.
NAVFAC
is encouraged to accept contractors as partners rather than
adversaries. NAVFAC should contract with contractors to perform value
engineering and constructability reviews during project design. The
burdensome CQC-West program should be discontinued and replaced with
NAVFAC
efforts to select only quality contractors for contracts.