This Guide is written primarily for the three principal project participants in a traditional design-bid-build (DBB) project - the owner, design professional, and constructor. It is also intended to be valuable to other project participants, including regulatory agency staff, subcontractors, subconsultants, and suppliers, as well as educators and students. Topics are organized in approximate project chronology, beginning with the owner?s role and the selection of a project delivery system, the selection of other team members, design, construction, start-up, and operations and maintenance.

This Guide also highlights areas in which alternate forms of project delivery, such as design-build, may shift project responsibilities and risks to different participants. In cases where the Guide describes functions that would typically be performed by many people on larger projects, the reader may infer that these functions may be carried out by one person or a few people on smaller projects.