The Detroit Water and Sewerage Department (DWSD) began service over one hundred years ago, and has grown to become the nation's third largest water utility. DWSD treats an average of 650 million gallons of water per day to serve a population of about four million people in 126 separate communities over an area of 1,000 square miles in southeastern Michigan. Like many water utilities in mature urban areas, DWSD is facing the combined challenges of requiring new infrastructure due to increasing customer demands while addressing an increasing need to replace aging infrastructure installed early in this century. With the increasingly competitive environment in which municipal utilities are now operating, these challenges must be met by delivering major capital projects in a timely and cost-effective manner, without major increases in the utility's personnel and other resources. DWSD has successfully met some of these challenges by completing several Design/Build (D/B) projects. Over the past five years, DWSD has increasingly turned to design/build to deliver a variety of challenging and routine projects. DWSD currently has over ten design/build projects valued at over $700 million in various stages of development, execution, or completion. DWSD has generally been pleased with the results of the design/build project delivery method, and is expanding its application. DWSD is convinced that the D/B project delivery method provides, among other things, reduced project delivery time, with single point responsibility, at a lower cost, and without overly stressing the Utility's organizational resources. Now DWSD is attempting to move the state of knowledge forward by adding long-term maintenance to traditional design/build, and are currently in the process of procuring a design/builder to replace DWSD's 75-year-old water filtration plant at Water Works Park. The objective of this project is to deliver a state-of-the-art 240 million gallons per day water treatment facility that DWSD will operate effectively for the next century. This paper discusses the DWSD's procurement process for design/build and design/build/maintain projects which differs from the process DWSD uses for design/bid/build projects. Contract documents, which also differ among these procurement processes, are discussed. The potential cost savings of design/build projects are addressed. Includes figures.