Construction Procurement Methods Compared: How to Choose the Right Route

Signing the building contract from a five-name list costs the project when design responsibility and the price clause still point at different parties. A construction procurement method decides who is contracted for design and for construction, and when those contracts start.

Published counts of three, five, six or eight methods are counts of different things. Federal Acquisition Regulation (FAR) 36.102 names two delivery methods, design-bid-build and design-build. The RIBA Plan of Work 2020 Overview describes five procurement strategies in chapter 8, and its stage chart adds construction management as a sixth label. The Joint Contracts Tribunal (JCT) groups its forms as traditional, design and build, management, and integrated team or partnering, then publishes a longer family list that also includes prime cost and target cost. A price type, including a cost ceiling, is not another route. This guide is a comparison of those public descriptions, retrieved 12 October 2026. It is not a bid result, a fee schedule or a project case.

This comparison sits in the Procurement collection. The AIA form numbers that match a route are in AIA contract documents for procurement.

Schematic, not a score. Each card repeats only the contract split or timing named by that source.

What does a construction procurement method decide?

It decides the contractual chain for design and construction: who employs the designers, when the construction team is appointed, who carries project risk under that contract, and what information has to be in the building contract. The RIBA Plan of Work 2020 Overview, chapter 8, lists those effects and states that there is no right or wrong approach. Each client has to weigh the pros and cons.

The same chapter says the choice does not fundamentally alter the design process during RIBA Stages 2 and 3. It does change Stage 4, because that is when specialist subcontractor design happens, and it can change whether the client’s design team is novated to the contractor. Novation, in that overview, means the design team’s employer changes from the client to the construction team.

FAR 36.102, as published by the Legal Information Institute, draws a narrower US line for federal acquisition. Design-bid-build is the traditional method in which design and construction are sequential and contracted separately, with two contracts and two contractors. Design-build combines design and construction in a single contract with one contractor. Two-phase design-build, in the same section, is a selection procedure, not a third delivery method: a limited number of offerors, normally five or fewer, is chosen in phase one to submit detailed proposals in phase two.

Takeaway: Write down who will employ the designers at the equivalent of RIBA Stage 4, and whether design and construction are one contract or two, before you argue about price.

Why do lists disagree on three, five, six or eight methods?

They mix delivery routes, selection procedures, contract families and payment types in one column. FAR 36.102’s delivery list has two names. Its two-phase design-build note is a way of choosing a design-builder. The Design-Build Institute of America (DBIA), on its “What Is Design-Build?” page, treats the single contract for design and construction as the difference from other methods, then names two variations of design-build itself: two-step best value, and progressive design-build.

RIBA’s chapter 8 prose describes five strategies: traditional, one-stage design and build, two-stage design and build, management contracting, and contractor-led. The Plan of Work stage chart also prints Construction Management on its own row, beside Management Contract. Chapter 8’s prose defines management contracting’s overlap. It does not, in the pages read for this guide, define how construction management allocates the trade contracts. That gap stays open here.

JCT’s contract-families page says its portfolio provides traditional or conventional, design and build, management, and integrated team or partnering contracts. The same page lists separate families, including Design and Build, Management Building Contract, Construction Management Contract, Prime Cost Building Contract and Target Cost Contract. Prime cost and target cost are payment families sitting in a catalogue that also contains delivery families. Counting every family name produces a longer list than counting delivery routes.

The Construction Management Association of America (CMAA) describes construction management as a professional service that is compatible with all project delivery methods. In that description the owner, the architect or engineer, and the general contractor are the project parties, and the construction manager represents the owner. That is not the same object as the Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) Construction Manager/General Contractor (CM/GC) method, which FHWA presents as a delivery method with a design phase and a construction phase.

A search for “the five methods” usually wants one official list. None of these sources publishes that list.

Takeaway: Ask which object the list is counting before you treat its length as a standard.

How do design-bid-build and design-build differ?

Design-bid-build keeps design and construction sequential and under separate contracts. Design-build puts both in one contract. That is the FAR 36.102 distinction, and it matches DBIA’s statement that the single contract is the fundamental difference from other delivery systems.

On the UK side, RIBA’s traditional route is the closest description to that sequence. The design team’s technical design information is issued for tender, usually as prescriptive information. The overview also allows descriptive information, often called the contractor’s design portion, for discrete parts that specialist subcontractors will design. After award, those subcontractors complete that design. Traditional is therefore sequential at the building contract, with room for later specialist design. It is not a promise that every line of the design is frozen at tender.

RIBA splits design and build into two timings. In one-stage design and build, the building contract is awarded and a design programme then sets when the design team and specialist subcontractors produce information. The client’s team has to put enough manufacturing and construction information into the Employer’s Requirements to define complex areas, the scope, and the core design or the final specifications. In two-stage design and build, the design team produces a concept that becomes the Employer’s Requirements at the end of Stage 2, and the contractor is appointed under a pre-contract design services agreement during Stage 3. The overview’s core question is whether further information is produced before or after the building contract is signed. More information beforehand gives the client certainty of the detail and takes more time.

DBIA describes two US variations that also move the moment of price. Two-step best value first identifies the most qualified design-builders, then seeks design and cost proposals, and the owner selects on design, project approach and contract price. Progressive design-build selects primarily on qualifications, then the owner and design-builder develop the design and the cost model toward a design and a contract price. FAR’s two-phase selection procedure is the federal version of a shortlist followed by a detailed proposal. It does not, in section 36.102, describe progressive design-build.

Employer’s Requirements, in the RIBA overview, are contractual and can range from a copy of the project brief to a spatially coordinated design with substantial technical design. The Contractor’s Proposals respond to those requirements. Where the requirements are only the brief, the contractor completes a design, usually in competition. Where the requirements already carry the Stage 3 information, the proposals often repeat that information, and the contractor can propose alternatives. Information in the proposals supersedes the requirements, with clauses left in place for the information the contractor still has to finish.

Where do management contracting, contractor-led and CM/GC fit?

They are routes in which the builder is involved while design is still moving, and they are not synonyms.

RIBA says management contracting achieves the shortest project programme by maximising the overlap between design, procurement and construction. Packages for building systems that must be designed before work starts on site are tendered and awarded earlier in Stage 4. An integrated design programme covers both the design team and the specialist subcontractors. The overview does not, in that passage, state who holds each trade contract. JCT publishes a Management Building Contract and a Construction Management Contract as separate families. This guide stops at that separation.

Contractor-led, in the same RIBA chapter, has contractors provide a design team and submit a concept at the end of Stage 2, typically with two teams going on to Stage 3. One construction team is then appointed preferred bidder and continues tendering core packages to finalise the contract sum. A shadow design team on the client side can review that information for compliance. The timing of contract award depends on planning.

FHWA’s CM/GC page, updated 10 April 2025, describes a highway method in two phases, design and construction. The contractor consults during design and can comment on constructability, pricing and risk from its means and methods. When the owner considers the design complete, the construction manager can bid from that design and schedule. If the owner, the designer and an independent cost estimator agree the price is fair, the owner issues a construction contract and the construction manager becomes the general contractor. That page does not call the price a guaranteed maximum, and it does not set out a private-building form. CMAA’s statement that construction management is compatible with every delivery method remains a description of a professional service, not a restatement of this FHWA sequence.

The material procurement process starts after someone already holds the trade or supply contracts. It does not choose among these routes.

How do fixed price, cost reimbursement and a price ceiling relate?

They are payment terms. FAR 16.101 groups federal contract types into fixed-price and cost-reimbursement, and says the types differ by the degree and timing of the contractor’s responsibility for performance costs and by the profit incentive. A firm-fixed-price contract, FAR 16.202-1, is a price not subject to adjustment based on the contractor’s cost experience. It places maximum risk and full responsibility for all costs and resulting profit or loss on the contractor. A cost-reimbursement contract, FAR 16.301-1, pays allowable incurred costs to the extent the contract prescribes, and it sets an estimate of total cost to obligate funds and a ceiling the contractor exceeds only at its own risk unless the contracting officer approves.

Those two sections do not say that design-bid-build must be firm-fixed-price, or that design-build must be cost-reimbursement. JCT’s decision to publish Prime Cost and Target Cost as families beside Design and Build and Management shows the same split from the other direction: a payment family and a delivery family can share a catalogue and still be different choices.

A guaranteed maximum price is often written up as if it were a sixth procurement method. None of the sources read for this guide defines that phrase or ties it to a named form. The sourced ceiling is the one in FAR 16.301-1. If the contract you are signing uses a cap, the clause has to say who pays above it, what cost is allowable, and whether the cap can move. This comparison does not supply those amounts. Where that cap is the price inside a construction manager at risk agreement, the public definitions of the role, the price, and who buys the trades are in construction manager at risk.

Schematic: the route names the contracts. FAR part 16 names the payment basis. One choice does not fill in the other.

Takeaway: Pick the route for who designs and who builds. Pick the payment clause for who pays when cost moves. Read a cap in the clause, not in the route’s nickname.

How do UK routes line up with US terms?

Use the descriptions, not a translation table that pretends the forms are identical.

NEC’s public product page, read the same day, describes the NEC4 Engineering and Construction Contract for engineering, building and construction, the Design Build and Operate contract for an integrated whole-life delivery, and the Alliance Contract as a multiparty contract. That page does not set out the ECC payment options. This guide does not invent them. AIA contract-document pages checked the same day did not return readable text, so no AIA form numbers are used here.

What should you check before you choose?

Answer the four questions in order, and stop when a source no longer covers your project. The diagram is a shortlist, not a score.

Schematic questions. RIBA says there is no right or wrong procurement approach, so the boxes do not total to a winner.

1. If the design information has to go out to tender before a contractor is appointed, FAR’s design-bid-build sequence and RIBA’s traditional tender are the descriptions that match. Record whether any specialist design is left as a contractor’s design portion.
2. If you want one party under one contract for design and construction, use the FAR and DBIA design-build description, then choose the timing: RIBA one-stage or two-stage, or DBIA two-step or progressive. Write down how complete the Employer’s Requirements will be.
3. If you want the builder’s pricing comments during design and a construction contract only after a price is agreed, FHWA’s CM/GC page describes that sequence for highway work. Do not stretch that page to a private building form it does not mention.
4. If the programme has to overlap design, procurement and construction, RIBA’s management contracting passage is the description that says so. Then read the actual management or construction-management form for who holds the trade contracts. That allocation is not in the passage.

After the route is chosen, material buying is a separate record. The first-order risk checklist fixes quantities, validity and terms before a first order. The installed-cost comparison compares quotes once the scope and delivery basis are the same. The procurement log keeps need dates and receipts after orders exist.

Common mistake: Treating a guaranteed maximum price, a target cost or a prime cost family as if the nickname had already chosen the delivery route. Open the payment clause and the appointment clause separately.

When this comparison does not apply

• An owner or agency that already mandates the route. Follow that rule.
• The trade-by-trade procedure inside CM/GC or construction management. FHWA’s page is the limit of the CM/GC description used here.
• Buying a product from a manufacturer, a distributor or a local stockist. That choice is in the material procurement process.
• Any price, fee, bid result or project outcome. None of the sources read here is a quote for your job.

Sources and method

Compared descriptions only. No bid results, contract prices or project cases are added. Pages and the RIBA PDF were retrieved 12 October 2026.

• 48 CFR 36.102, Legal Information Institute: design-bid-build, design-build, and two-phase design-build selection.
• 48 CFR 16.101, 16.202-1 and 16.301-1, Legal Information Institute: fixed-price and cost-reimbursement, firm-fixed-price, and the cost-reimbursement ceiling.
• What Is Design-Build?, Design-Build Institute of America: single contract, two-step best value, progressive design-build.
• RIBA Plan of Work 2020 Overview (PDF), chapter 8: traditional, one-stage and two-stage design and build, management contracting, contractor-led, novation, Employer’s Requirements.
• JCT contract families: traditional, design and build, management, integrated team or partnering, and the named families including prime cost and target cost.
• What is Construction Management?, CMAA: a professional service compatible with all delivery methods.
• Construction Manager/General Contractor (CM/GC), FHWA, page updated 10 April 2025.
• NEC contracts: ECC, Design Build and Operate, and Alliance descriptions. Payment options are not on that page.
• AIA contract pages were requested the same day and did not return readable text, so this guide names no AIA forms.

This guide is general information, not legal advice. Your contract controls.