Performance Based Studies Research Group

PBSRG has been featured numerous times on Ted Garrison's New Construction Strategies Radio Show over the past few years. So much so that NCS has created a dedicated Best Value page on their website, to highlight these recordings. In April of this year, Dr. Dean Kashiwagi came on the show to explain how contractors can turn Best Value into a competitive advantage. A few weeks later, Jacob Kashiwagi introduced the Phases of PIPS as part of a 3 segment series on the show. Follow the links to listen to the interviews. Last month, NCS interviewed two current users of the Best Value Model: Mike Perkins, Associate Vice President for Capital Planning and Project Management at the University of Minnesota, and Denise Digruccio, National Account Manager for Neogard. Here are some highlights, as well as the full recordings:

Mike Perkins

Text Version

Mike: "...Through the process with PBSRG we’ve saved about $42M or 31% off of our expected spend in our construction projects...”

Ted: "What do you see as the benefits of best value and PIPS?”

Mike: “There are numerous benefits. I think about accountability, and what I mean by that is placing accountability with the appropriate party in any sort of a transaction for construction project. I think about risk, risk mitigation, risk minimization, this is the system is designed to minimize that. Oftentimes people think minimization is elimination, it is not elimination, it is minimizing. I want to be very clear about that. I think about anonymity and transparency. And when we select our vendors we do with this system, which operates under a veil of anonymity which gives us total transparency in the whole process. This is the most transparent process that we have ever worked with. It’s a simple system. It is designed to eliminate or minimize decision-making and if you let it work properly, it will do that"

Ted: “The mistake that a lot of people make, is that they want to delegate the responsibility, but keep the authority. What you’re saying is that you delegate the authority and the responsibility.”

Mike: “Well we’re trying to do both. You know, we’re coming at it with imperfect people and we’re still learning the process even though we’ve been at it for five years, and what we’re really struggling against, our biggest challenge is working on all the predispositions, and all the learning and experience that we bring to our jobs from our past, and that past is when you're involved in construction projects as a project manager, your job is control, your job is decision-making, and your job is detail. But this is a system that tries to really divorce you or remove you from that and really put those responsibilities with the entities that have the most expertise to do the best job, and that clearly not the owner.”

Denise Digruccio

Text Version

Ted: "One of the challenges for most manufacturers is the lack of direct communication between themselves and the end-user. So how has Neogard been able to bridge that communication gap?”

Denise: "We worked with Dr. Kashiwagi to try to help communicate to the client that what we're trying to do is create accountability. And we do that with ourselves by measuring ourselves. So we bring experts to the table from our manufacturing side, as far as our chemists, formulating our products. And then test that product, to see how that product performed. We don’t spend a great deal of money on marketing, but we do spend a great deal of money in our research and development, because we want to effectively minimize our risk, as well as the risk we bring to a client. So we measure ourselves constantly.”

Denise: “...The time is now where people have to say I’ve got to be better at what I do, I can’t do this over and over again...”

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