Most people assume the first real decision on a building project is hiring an architect. In practice, an equally consequential decision happens around the same time, and it is one most owners have never heard framed as a decision at all. It is the question of how the project will actually be delivered: who holds which contracts, when the builder gets involved, and who carries the risk if costs move. Pastors, nonprofit boards, and developers rarely arrive at their first meeting with us having thought about this. By the time we finish that first meeting, they usually understand why it matters as much as anything we will draw. It shapes the sequence of every decision that follows, from how the architect and builder are chosen to who is on the hook when a surprise turns up in an existing wall or an unmarked utility line.

The traditional approach, and the one most people picture when they imagine a building project, is design-bid-build. The owner contracts with an architect to complete a full set of drawings and specifications. Once those documents are finished, contractors bid on the project using those same documents, and the owner selects a builder, typically the lowest responsible bidder. It is a linear process with clear phases and well-established roles, which is part of why it has been the default for so long. According to a joint primer from the AIA and the Associated General Contractors of America, private organizations with large constituencies, including churches and schools, are often required or expected to use sealed-bid procedures similar to those used on public projects, which makes design-bid-build the natural fit for many of our church clients even when it is not the fastest path available.

The appeal of design-bid-build is real. Competitive bidding on a complete set of documents tends to produce a reliable market price, and every bidder is pricing the exact same scope, which makes comparison straightforward for a building committee or a board. The tradeoff is that the owner carries most of the risk for anything the drawings did not anticipate. If field conditions differ from what the documents assumed, or if a subcontractor finds a conflict between two systems that was not caught until construction, that gap in the documents becomes a change order, and the owner typically pays for it. We have written before about what happens when those bids land over budget, and design-bid-build is the method where that scenario shows up most often, because nobody with construction expertise has reviewed the documents for buildability before they go out to bid.

Construction manager at risk, usually shortened to CM at risk or CMAR, addresses that gap by bringing a builder into the process during design rather than after it. The owner still holds two separate contracts, one with the architect and one with the construction manager, but the construction manager offers preconstruction services while the drawings are being developed. That means real-time input on cost, schedule, and constructability while there is still time to act on it, rather than discovering a problem after the documents are sealed and bid. Eventually the construction manager provides a guaranteed maximum price, at which point they take on the financial responsibility for costs above that number, which shifts meaningful risk away from the owner. For a nonprofit board or a first-time commercial developer without in-house construction expertise, that early cost visibility is often worth more than the theoretical savings of a fully competitive bid, because it replaces guesswork with a running conversation about what things actually cost.

Consider a typical church expansion scenario to see why the timing matters. A building committee often assumes, without ever discussing it, that they will design the full project and then bid it competitively the way their previous building was built two decades earlier, because that is simply the only model anyone on the committee has experienced. Bring a construction manager into the process during schematic design instead, and that manager is positioned to flag a site utility conflict or a structural assumption that would otherwise surface only after the drawings are sealed and out to bid. Resolving that kind of issue on paper during design costs a redlined sheet and a conversation. Discovering the same issue in the field after construction has started costs a change order, a schedule delay, and an uncomfortable meeting with the finance committee. That is the practical difference between reading about risk allocation in the abstract and having a structure in place that catches the problem while it is still cheap to fix.

Design-build collapses the structure further by putting design and construction under a single contract with one entity responsible for both. Instead of an owner managing two separate relationships and mediating between them when disagreements arise, there is one point of contact and one party accountable for the outcome. This tends to compress the schedule because design and construction phases can overlap, and it removes the friction that sometimes develops when an architect and a contractor who were never on the same team have to negotiate who is responsible for a gap in the documents. The trend toward this model is not a passing fashion. A recent industry study covered by Building Design+Construction, a trade publication covering the commercial construction industry, found design-build now accounts for nearly 40 percent of nonresidential construction spending nationally, with industry forecasts projecting that share to keep climbing as more owners prioritize schedule certainty and single-source accountability over the traditional bidding process. For franchise operators fitting out multiple locations on a tight timeline, or hospitality owners racing to reopen a renovated property, that schedule compression can matter more than any other variable in the decision. The tradeoff is that the owner gives up some of the independent check that comes from having a separate architect and contractor, so the strength and reputation of the design-build team matters even more than it would under the other two models.

The delivery method also determines how a client should go about choosing an architect and a builder in the first place, which is a step owners often get backwards. Under design-bid-build, the construction contract is typically awarded on price alone once bids come in, so the meaningful selection decision is choosing the architect, and that should happen on qualifications rather than fee. Under CM at risk and design-build, the calculus shifts, because the owner is selecting a construction partner earlier and often with less price certainty, which means qualifications and past performance carry even more weight than they would in a straight bid process. A request for qualifications followed by interviews, rather than a request for the lowest number, tends to protect an owner far better under these two methods, since the working relationship and the team’s judgment during design will matter more than a bid tab ever could.

None of these three methods is inherently better than the others, and we are careful never to present the choice that way to a client. The right method depends on the owner’s tolerance for risk, the sophistication of the ownership group, the certainty of the project’s scope at the outset, and sometimes on constraints that have nothing to do with construction at all, like a denomination’s bylaws or a board’s fiduciary obligations around competitive bidding. A church replacing a sanctuary roof after storm damage has a different risk profile than a developer building a mixed-use property on speculation, and a franchise operator opening a tenth location has already learned lessons the other two have not. Part of our job in the earliest conversations, often around the same time we are helping a client define the building program, is walking through these tradeoffs honestly so the decision gets made deliberately instead of by default. We have also seen owners land on a hybrid approach, using a negotiated, qualifications-based selection process within a design-bid-build structure rather than a pure low-bid award, which captures some of the relationship benefits of CM at risk without abandoning a model their bylaws or board culture require. There is no shame in that kind of blend. The point is never to chase the trendiest delivery model; it is to match the structure to the people and the risk actually in front of you.

What we have found over 25 years of doing this work is that the owners who ask about delivery method early, before they have hired anyone, tend to have smoother projects regardless of which method they choose. The ones who never ask the question end up defaulting into design-bid-build simply because it is the model everyone assumes, sometimes when a CM at risk or design-build approach would have served them far better given their timeline or risk tolerance. That is not a criticism. Most owners building for the first time have no reason to know this decision exists, let alone that it happens before a single wall gets designed. We would rather have that conversation in the first meeting than watch a client discover the tradeoffs the hard way six months into construction.

This is exactly the kind of decision where having a genuine partner rather than a vendor makes a measurable difference. We walk every client through these three models in plain language before recommending anything, because the right delivery method depends entirely on that client’s risk tolerance, timeline, and internal capacity, not on a one-size-fits-all default. Having designed and helped deliver more than a thousand church and commercial projects across every one of these structures, we bring pattern recognition to that first conversation that most owners simply have not had the chance to build for themselves. If you are early enough in a project that this decision has not been made yet, we would welcome the chance to talk it through with you.