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Beyond the Survey: Using Geospatial Intelligence to Strengthen Design-Build Pursuits

By Matt LaLuzerne
National Director of BD & Geospatial Services

When teams have access to similar technologies, the competitive advantage isn’t the tool. It’s how creatively you use it to uncover opportunities, develop better solutions and strengthen the pursuit.

Design-build pursuits require teams to bring both technical capability and innovative thinking to the discussion. The challenge is finding opportunities to differentiate the solution while there is still time to influence it.

Mobile mapping, aerial imagery, UAS, lidar, digital terrain models, utility information and other geospatial resources can provide a clearer understanding of project conditions. But access to better data is only part of the equation. The greater opportunity comes from bringing geospatial expertise into the pursuit early enough to help the team ask different questions, test ideas and explore what can be possible.

THE SHIFT: From Defining the Scope to Shaping the Solution

Traditionally, the geospatial conversation might begin with a straightforward question:

  • What do you need surveyed? That question has a purpose. But it assumes the team already knows what information it needs and how it intends to use it.
  • A different question can lead to a different conversation: What are you trying to decide?

The first question defines a scope. The second opens the door to understanding the problem the team is trying to solve and what information could influence the solution. That distinction matters during a design-build pursuit. When geospatial professionals join the conversation, they can help share what existing information may already be available, what conditions need greater clarity and where additional insight could help the team see the project differently.

Ask the right question while there’s still time to change the answer.

THE OPPORTUNITY: Think Beyond the Expected Solution

A strong design-build pursuit requires more than technical capability. It requires innovative thinking that can uncover better solutions and greater value. Could better information reveal another approach, avoid a constraint, reshape the concept or help test an idea faster? These are project questions that geospatial expertise can help answer.

Decision Point 1: What Don’t We Know Yet?
Positioning + Early Pursuit
Understand the conditions. Identify what could change the approach.

Early in a pursuit, teams are working with varying levels of information. Some conditions are well understood. Others may be based on preliminary plans, older imagery, existing records or assumptions that have not yet been verified. The goal isn’t to eliminate every unknown. It’s to identify the information that could impact the team’s thinking.

Questions to consider:

  • Are we making decisions using the best information available?
  • What existing conditions could change our proposed approach?
  • What information would give the team greater confidence in a potential concept?
  • Are there utility, right-of-way, environmental, structural or site conditions we should understand better?
  • What ideas could we collect information about, model or validate?

Decision Point 2: What Could We Do Differently?
Concept Development + Alternative Technical Concept (ATC) Development
Test the possibilities. Find the opportunity.

Once the team has a clearer understanding of existing conditions, the conversation can shift from What do we know? to What could we do differently? This is where intel can move beyond documenting conditions and help support innovation. Alternative technical concepts are intended to challenge the expected solution. Having timely, accurate information gives designers another resource for exploring those possibilities, evaluating their feasibility and communicating what they could mean for the project.

Questions to consider:

  • What could better information allow us to do differently?
  • Are we accepting an impact or constraint that could be avoided?
  • Could existing conditions suggest a different approach?
  • Are there other planned projects we could coordinate with to reduce costs or impacts?

COLLABORATION IN ACTION: Looking Beyond the Immediate Solution

On a recent I-95 design-build pursuit, the design team reconfigured a major interchange and identified approximately $90 million in construction savings. With high-resolution geospatial data for the corridor already available, the geospatial team developed a preliminary survey model that helped the team evaluate the concept and explore what else those savings could make possible. One opportunity was the addition of approximately 13 miles of auxiliary lanes along I-95, a critical hurricane evacuation route.

Having accurate information available early gave the team a stronger foundation for developing concepts, evaluating alternatives and demonstrating additional value during the pursuit. In this case, that meant looking beyond the immediate interchange solution to an opportunity that could improve mobility and strengthen the corridor’s ability to support emergency evacuations when it matters most.

The example illustrates a larger point: geospatial intelligence can help the team see the next question worth asking.

THE DIFFERENTIATOR: Your Geospatial Teaming Partner

The role of a geospatial partner in a design-build pursuit doesn’t have to begin and end with data collection. When brought into the conversation earlier, geospatial professionals can offer their understanding of existing conditions, available data, technology and modeling to the problem-solving process.

So, during your next design-build pursuit, ask your geospatial partner what they can help you solve.

Matt LaLuzerne is National Director of Business Development and Geospatial Services at McKim & Creed, with more than 20 years of experience advancing geospatial solutions for complex transportation and infrastructure projects. His expertise spans surveying, remote sensing and multi-platform geospatial technologies, with a focus on helping clients and project teams use data to evaluate alternatives, solve challenges and make more informed decisions. He is also a frequent industry speaker and technical resource on surveying and geospatial mapping.