Anine Eschberger Wortmann, Léo Lejeune, Kelly Coles and Joel Schwartz compare procurement models through the practical question that matters most to facade quality: who is empowered to make decisions, when specialists are engaged and how design intent is protected as risk transfers.
Procurement sets influence
Traditional design-bid-build, design-build and design-assist models allocate authority differently. A conventional consultant-led process gives the design team strong early control but can delay specialist fabrication input. Design-build can bring contractor knowledge forward but may shift priorities towards programme and cost. Design assist attempts to combine the two by involving facade trades while the design is still open enough to change.
Mock-ups enable shared decisions
The BMO Centre experience described by the panel showed the value of regular collaboration around full-scale mock-ups. When owners, architects and facade specialists can review a physical sample together, aesthetic and technical concerns are resolved in the same conversation. Changes can be tested quickly rather than travelling through long contractual chains.
Responsibility protects quality
Facade problems often emerge at interfaces between contracts. If one party designs the panel, another the support and a third the perimeter seal, no one may own the performance of the complete transition. Procurement documents therefore need clear design responsibility, submittal requirements and testing criteria.
Timing shapes specialist input
Different delivery models bring specialist contractors, consultants and manufacturers into the project at different moments. In a traditional sequence, the facade may be substantially defined before the trade responsible for fabrication is appointed. Design assist, construction management and other collaborative models can bring that knowledge forward, but only if the scope is clear. Early involvement without defined responsibility can create duplicated effort or advice that disappears when the final contract is awarded. The panel's recurring concern was therefore timing. System selection, module size, tolerances, testing strategy and major interfaces are most valuable to discuss while the architecture can still change. Once structural edges, glass sizes and panel geometry are fixed, specialist input often becomes value engineering rather than design development. Procurement is not administrative background; it determines which technical voices are present when the important facade decisions are made.
Ownership protects intent
Collaborative delivery does not remove the need to know who owns calculations, shop drawings, delegated design and interface coordination. A performance specification can give the contractor freedom to develop a system, but the criteria have to be measurable and the review process has to distinguish compliance from architectural preference. Conversely, an overly prescriptive design can transfer little real freedom while still leaving the contractor responsible for performance. The most successful model is the one that matches responsibility with control. If a party carries water-tightness, structural or thermal risk, it needs enough influence over the details that govern that risk. If the architect needs a particular joint rhythm or depth, those visual essentials need to be identified before cost pressure begins. The panel framed good procurement as a shared map of obligations: who decides, who verifies, who fabricates and who remains accountable when the facade moves from drawing to site.
