For example, performance bonds may not cover an affiliated engineer's design services. Although it is certainly possible to arrange adequate and appropriate insurance and bonding, the unique legal issues require additional analysis. Competitive Bidding Laws Projects funded with public money usually require a competitive process to choose a contractor, even in design-build projects. The federal government solicits competitive proposals for numerous other types of procurement action, including design professional's services, so there are few unique legal issues arising out of competitive proposals for design-build projects. This may create some new issues involving responsiveness of the proposals.
More difficult restrictions exist at the state and local levels.
Some statutes and regulations absolutely require competitive bidding on the basis of price, a problem for design-build projects. As design-build increases in popularity, interesting issues of municipal law will likely arise, such as whether contractors can compete on the basis of number and quality of widgets for a fixed price, as opposed to the price of a fixed number of widgets described in technical specifications. In projects administered by state or local agencies but with federal funds, legal issues will likely arise as to whether federal procurement requirements will preempt inconsistent state or local requirements that could be read to restrict design-build. The design professional's loyalty to the contractor becomes less pronounced because of the contractor's lesser degree of risk. The relevance and importance of change orders is drastically diminished.