October 14, 2026
Design-Build vs Design-Bid-Build for Ontario Owners in 2026
Design-build vs design-bid-build comes down to when you want a firm price and how much of the design you want to control. Under design-bid-build, your own architect finishes the design, contractors bid on it, and you sign a fixed price (in Canada, usually on CCDC 2). Under design-build, you sign one contract with one firm that designs and builds for a price agreed before the design is done (CCDC 14). Design-bid-build gives you more control and a price you can compare across bidders. Design-build gives you one party responsible and an earlier start, but your control over the design moves into a written statement of what you need.
Construction management, progressive design-build and integrated project delivery also have Canadian standard forms. Which one suits your project depends on how settled your scope is, how fast you need to start and how much time your own people can give it. This guide sets them side by side for an Ontario owner making the choice for the first time. It isn’t legal advice: a construction lawyer drafts the contract once you’ve picked the route.
The delivery methods at a glance
The Canadian Construction Documents Committee publishes a standard form for each of the common methods, and a guide to choosing between them, CCDC 10 – 2018 A Guide to Construction Project Delivery Methods, which “identifies the issues that should be considered when selecting a project delivery method.” The editions below are the ones listed on the CCDC documents page as of October 2026.
| Method | Standard form | Who holds the design contract | When the price is fixed | Who carries the price risk once fixed | Owner’s effort | Usually a good fit for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Design-bid-build | CCDC 2 – 2020 | You, with your architect (often on CCDC 31) | At tender, on complete documents | The general contractor, for what the documents show | High during design, moderate during construction | Clear scope, time to finish the design, wanting competition on the whole job |
| Design-build | CCDC 14 – 2026 (2013 still sold) | The design-builder | At signing, on your Statement of Requirements | The design-builder, for design and construction | Low once requirements are set, then design reviews | Buildings you can describe by performance: industrial, warehouse, repeatable types |
| Progressive design-build | CCDC 32 – 2026 | The design-builder | At the end of a development phase, after design and pricing are worked up together | The design-builder, once the final price is accepted | High in the development phase | Complex or uncertain projects where you want to shape the design before committing |
| Construction management for services | CCDC 5A – 2025 | You | Package by package, as trades are tendered | You, across many trade contracts | High throughout | Experienced owners who want trade contracts in their own name |
| Construction management at risk | CCDC 5B – 2025 | You | Optionally, when the design is far enough along (GMP or stipulated price) | The construction manager, within its GMP or price | High throughout | Larger or faster projects that benefit from a builder’s input during design |
| Integrated project delivery | CCDC 30 – 2025 | Shared, under one multi-party contract | A target price, with profit at risk against shared goals | Shared among the parties | Very high throughout | Complex, high-risk projects with an owner willing to share decisions |
The owner’s effort column follows the Canadian Construction Association’s own summary in Building forward (June 2026).
Two columns do most of the work. The earlier you want a firm price, the less design sits behind it and the more of the design you hand to someone else. And the methods that give you the most control ask the most of your own team.
Cost-plus doesn’t appear as a row because it’s a way of paying rather than a way of organizing the project. We come back to it below.
Design-bid-build: design first, then tender
You hire an architect and engineers, they design the building and produce a full set of drawings and specifications, and you tender that set to several general contractors. The lowest compliant bid usually wins and you sign a stipulated price contract, which in Canada is almost always CCDC 2 – 2020.
What you get
- A price you can compare. Every bidder prices the same documents, so the numbers line up.
- Control over the design. Your architect works for you. Every finish, system and layout decision is yours to make, through them.
- A familiar contract. General contractors, sureties, insurers and lenders all know CCDC 2 well, and that familiarity has value when it comes time to finance and insure the job. MLT Aikins called it one of the most common construction contracts used throughout Canada when the 2020 edition came out.
What it asks of you
The price holds only as far as the documents do. If the drawings are incomplete, conflict with each other or miss something the site needs, the contractor is entitled to a change, priced after the fact and without a competing bid. Under design-bid-build, the design is your side of the contract: errors and omissions in it are generally a matter between you and your consultants, and the contractor is paid to fix them. How changes are priced and approved under CCDC 2 is covered in where change orders come from.
The other cost is time. The building can’t start until the documents are finished and the tender has run, and on a financed project every month of that carries interest. How to run that tender, from prequalifying bidders to levelling the bids, is set out in our guide to the construction tender process in Ontario.
When it fits
It suits owners who know what they want, have time to let the design finish and want competition on the whole job. The CCA’s report puts it plainly: the optimal scenario is a “repeatable solution, following set criteria without a desire for alternatives,” with “minimal risk of uncovering unknowns,” and the unsuitable one includes “projects with aggressive timelines” and “projects susceptible to design changes during the construction phase.”
Design-build and progressive design-build
Fixed-price design-build (CCDC 14)
Under design-build you sign one contract, with a design-builder, which hires the architect and engineers, designs the project and builds it. The CCDC describes CCDC 14 – 2026 as a contract “where the Design-Builder performs design services and construction under one agreement for a single pre determined stipulated price.”
The price is agreed before the design is finished, often before it’s developed in any detail. The design-builder carries the risk that its design costs more to build than it priced. You carry the risk that a design you don’t control line by line gives you less than you had in mind.
Your control over the design moves into a document called the Owner’s Statement of Requirements. It’s written before any drawings exist, it’s what the design-builder prices and designs to, and it’s what you measure the finished building against. A requirement left out of it is generally a change later. Plain, measurable requirements (“minimum 3.0 m clear to underside of structure”) hold up far better than adjectives (“generous ceiling heights”). Writing that document well is most of the owner’s work on a design-build project, and we’ve covered it in detail in CCDC 14 for design-build, along with what changed in the 2026 edition.
What design-build gives you:
- One party responsible. If the building doesn’t work as the requirements describe, there’s one contract to look to. Design errors are the design-builder’s to fix, because the designers work for it.
- An earlier start. Design and construction can overlap.
What it costs you:
- Less say in the design. Once the price is fixed, asking for something the requirements don’t call for is a change, priced by the design-builder with no competing bid.
- A harder comparison. Each bidder prices its own design, so you’re judging design and price together.
- A price that carries risk premium. A design-builder pricing an incomplete design builds in allowances for what it can’t yet see.
Progressive design-build (CCDC 32)
Progressive design-build was created for the gap between those two. You pick a design-builder early, mostly on qualifications, and work up the design, the estimate and the schedule together before agreeing a price. CCDC 32 – 2026 is the new Canadian form for it.
As Fasken summarizes it (June 2026), CCDC 32 has a Project Development Phase and a Design/Construction Phase. In the first, the design-builder works through a series of Project Gates, and at each one submits the design to date, a construction cost estimate, an estimated schedule and any proposed refinements to the Statement of Requirements. At each gate you can accept and move on, ask for changes, or stop. If you stop before accepting the final proposal, the design-builder is paid for the services and work done to that point. At the last gate it submits a Final Project Proposal with a stipulated price, and if you accept, construction proceeds on that price. Early Work can be authorized so the schedule doesn’t wait for the final number.
Infrastructure Ontario uses a version of this. It has described adopting “a Progressive Design-Build model with target price regime for construction” for its healthcare and social infrastructure program, building on its progressive and alliance work in transit, and used it for the Peel Memorial Phase 2 RFQ in May 2024 (Infrastructure Ontario, Building success together).
You get a builder’s input while the design is flexible and an exit at each gate, but no firm price until late, and you pay for the development phase whether or not you go ahead. The CCA notes progressive design-build is unsuitable for “projects requiring fixed price or full scope definition upfront” and for “situations where client resources do not permit significant project involvement.”
The CCA report also warns against one common mistake in buying it: choosing the design-builder on the lowest development-phase fee. That phase is meant to be where the team finds savings and takes out risk, and the report says the criterion that matters most is “the likelihood of the team succeeding in establishing a target price that is within the project affordability limit.” Private owners can take the same lesson: pick the team you trust to get the price into your budget.
Construction management, and general contractor vs construction manager
Construction management is the third family. You keep your own architect, as in design-bid-build, but you bring a builder on during design, usually selected on fee and qualifications rather than a full price. The construction manager advises on cost, schedule and buildability while the design develops, then tenders the work trade by trade. The Canadian forms are CCDC 5A and 5B, both reissued in 2025 for the first time since 2010.
The two versions
- CCDC 5A – 2025, construction management for services. The construction manager is your limited agent. You sign each trade contract yourself, normally on CCDC 17, and you carry the price risk package by package. The CM is paid a fee for its services.
- CCDC 5B – 2025, construction management for services and construction. Often called construction management at risk. The construction manager holds the trade contracts and is paid the cost of the work plus a fee. CCDC’s own description lists three pricing options it can move to once the design is far enough along: “Guaranteed Maximum Price (GMP), GMP Plus Percentage Cost Savings, and conversion into a Stipulated Price Contract.”
The differences between them, including how holdback works under each and who is likely to be the constructor under Ontario’s health and safety rules, are set out in CCDC 5A vs 5B.
When construction management fits
Construction management earns its fee when design and construction have to overlap, when a builder’s input during design saves real money, or when the project is large enough that tendering trade packages separately gives better pricing and control. Our team’s experience, built at PCL Constructors and Oxford Properties, covers both sides of this: construction management on projects such as the Square One renovation and expansion in Mississauga, delivered while the centre stayed open, and lump-sum delivery on Building 3 at Oxford’s Riverbend Business Park in Burnaby.
The CCA report is direct about where it doesn’t fit: an “unclear or changing scope of work,” a design that “has advanced without contractor input,” or a client without “a strong and experienced project team to manage the project scope, designer, and contractor.” It also notes that publicly procured CM at risk projects using the balanced risk allocation in CCDC 5B have seen “significant success in achieving cost and schedule targets” where owners set up project charters to keep the owner, designer, builder and main trades working together.
General contractor vs construction manager
Owners often ask whether they need a general contractor or a construction manager. The short version:
| General contractor | Construction manager | |
|---|---|---|
| When they join | After the design is done, at tender | During design |
| How they’re chosen | Usually on price | Usually on fee, experience and team |
| How they’re paid | A stipulated price (CCDC 2), or cost plus a fee (CCDC 3) | A fee for services (5A), or cost of the work plus a fee, with an optional GMP or fixed price (5B) |
| Who holds the trade contracts | The general contractor | You (5A) or the construction manager (5B) |
| Input into the design | Little; they build what’s drawn | Cost, schedule and buildability advice as the design develops |
| When you know the full price | At contract signing | Progressively, as packages are tendered, or when a GMP is agreed |
A general contractor and a construction manager are both builders, with a commercial stake of their own in the contract, which is entirely normal. Owners who want experienced advice that sits outside either contract hire an owner’s representative alongside them. How those roles fit together is in owner’s rep or construction manager.
Integrated project delivery (CCDC 30)
The furthest step along this line is integrated project delivery. Under CCDC 30 – 2025, the owner, designers and builder sign one multi-party contract. The work is paid on a cost-plus basis against a target price, and the design and construction team’s profit sits in a risk pool that stays at risk “subject to the achievement of mutually agreed project objectives.” The CCA describes alliance and IPD models as suited to “complex, high-risk projects with influential stakeholders,” and unsuitable for “clients unwilling to share decision-making” or teams “lacking trust.” The Ontario examples the CCA cites are large public projects, such as the Waaban Crossing in Kingston. For a private owner or developer building one building, it’s rarely the first method to look at.
Cost-plus and GMP: how you pay, not how you buy
Cost-plus is often listed as a fourth delivery method. It’s better thought of as a pricing basis that can sit inside several methods.
Under a cost-plus contract you pay the builder’s actual costs plus a fee. The Canadian form is CCDC 3 – 2016, which the CCDC describes as working on an “actual-cost basis, plus a percentage or fixed fee which is applied to actual costs.” The same idea sits inside CCDC 5B (cost of the work plus a fee, with a GMP option), inside the development phase of progressive design-build, and inside IPD’s target price.
A guaranteed maximum price (GMP) is a cap on that cost: the builder is paid actual costs plus fee up to the cap, and carries costs above it. A GMP needs enough design behind it for the builder to price the risk, so it usually comes late in design, not at the start.
So there are two separate questions: how the project is organized (who designs, who builds, how many contracts you sign), and how the builder is paid (fixed price, cost plus fee, a cap, or a target with shared savings). Running a cost-plus contract well takes cost records, audit rights and someone on your side who reads them every month. We cover what that involves in how a cost-plus contract works.
Where Ontario’s public owners are heading
Public owners shape what the market is used to, so it helps to know where they’re moving.
The CCA’s June 2026 report, written for Public Services and Procurement Canada, describes Ontario procurement authorities “releasing procurements that attempt to use collaborative procurement models such as Alliance, Progressive DB (Target Price) and CM, but are also trying to maintain certain levels of pricing and execution risk to the contractor.” It also observes that Infrastructure Ontario “is also using more DBB contracts to attract a broader range of smaller contractors to healthcare and justice projects.” Across social infrastructure nationally, it says design-build and design-bid-build are “primarily used on small to medium-sized social infrastructure projects on greenfield sites,” while construction management and progressive target price models “are increasingly being deployed on brownfield, large renovation, or other more complex projects.”
Infrastructure Ontario’s own Market Update for June 2026 lists projects across design-bid-build, design-build-finance, design-build-finance-maintain, alliance and progressive models, and notes that it “continues to review these projects for the most suitable delivery model (inclusive of procurement strategy and contract form) in recognition of continuing market feedback.”
No single method is winning. The large owners are matching method to project: fixed-price routes where the scope is clear, collaborative ones where it isn’t. One of the CCA’s recommendations is that owners “adopt more rigorous and structured assessment methods that prioritize project characteristics, market capacity, stakeholder needs, and long-term operational value.” The checklist below is that assessment at the scale of a single building.
How to choose a delivery method for your project
The questions that decide it
Work through these with whoever is advising you on cost and schedule. Each answer leans one way or the other.
- How settled is the scope? If you can describe the building in detail today and don’t expect to change it, fixed-price routes (design-bid-build or design-build) work well. If the program, the site or the budget is still moving, construction management or progressive design-build gives you room to settle it before the price is fixed.
- How much does the design itself matter to you? If the finishes carry your brand, the building faces the public or stakeholders will want a say in how it looks, keep the architect on your side of the table (design-bid-build or construction management). If what matters is that the building performs, design-build can deliver that with less of your time.
- How fast do you need to start? Every method that overlaps design and construction (design-build, progressive design-build, construction management) starts earlier than design-bid-build. The price of the overlap is a firm number later, or a firm number with less design behind it.
- What is the existing site or building like? Renovations, heritage buildings, contaminated land and tight urban sites all hide conditions. A fixed price on those has to carry allowances for what nobody can see yet. Methods with a builder involved early let you investigate before you commit.
- Who on your side will run it? Construction management and progressive design-build ask for an owner who can make decisions quickly, review estimates and manage several contracts. If you don’t have that team in-house, you either hire it (an owner’s rep or development manager) or choose a method that asks less of you.
- What will your lender accept? Lenders and insurers want to know who carries the cost risk. CMHC’s standard rental reference guide, for example, asks for a fixed price or construction management contract and a cost review by a quantity surveyor. Ask your lender which contract forms it’s comfortable funding before you commit to one. How lenders fund draws under each is in construction financing in Ontario.
- What is the market doing? When builders are busy, fewer bid on risky fixed-price work and those that do price the risk in. When work is scarce, tenders on complete documents tend to price keenly.
- How big is the project, and can it be split? The CCA recommends owners consider “applying different procurement models at different phases or dividing large projects into packages.” A design-build package for enabling works and construction management for the main building is a normal combination.
What the answers usually point to
| If your situation looks like this | Look first at |
|---|---|
| Clear scope, time to finish the design, wanting the most competitive price | Design-bid-build (CCDC 2) |
| A building you can describe by performance, wanting one party responsible and an earlier start | Design-build (CCDC 14) |
| A complex or uncertain project, wanting the design-builder’s input before a price, with an exit at each stage | Progressive design-build (CCDC 32) |
| A large or fast project, a design that benefits from a builder’s input, and an experienced owner-side team | Construction management (CCDC 5A or 5B) |
| A renovation with an uncertain scope, a trusted builder and the capacity to review costs | Cost-plus (CCDC 3), ideally moving to a GMP or fixed price as the scope settles |
What stays the same whichever route you pick
Ontario’s Construction Act applies to every one of them: monthly proper invoices, payment within 28 days, a 10% holdback and, from 2026, annual holdback release. The budget has to carry the costs beyond construction, which we break down in hard costs vs soft costs. And whichever method you choose, the decisions made before the contract is signed, on scope, budget and schedule, drive most of what happens after. That work is preconstruction, and it’s where the choice of method should be made.
Frequently asked questions
Is design-build cheaper than design-bid-build?
Not reliably, and there’s no Canadian data we’d stand behind that says either is cheaper. Design-bid-build usually gives the most competitive price for what’s on the drawings, but changes for anything the drawings missed come later. Design-build carries a risk premium for pricing an incomplete design, but fewer of the gaps come back to you. The total cost depends mostly on how settled your scope is and how well it’s described.
Which delivery method is fastest?
Methods that overlap design and construction (design-build, progressive design-build and construction management) can start building earlier than design-bid-build, which waits for complete documents and a tender. Whether the project finishes earlier depends on how quickly the owner makes decisions during design. A design-build project held up waiting for owner approvals can lose its head start.
What are the main types of construction contracts in Canada?
By delivery method, the CCDC forms cover stipulated price (CCDC 2), design-build (CCDC 14), progressive design-build (CCDC 32), construction management (CCDC 5A and 5B), trade contracts on CM projects (CCDC 17) and integrated project delivery (CCDC 30). By pricing, the main types are stipulated price, cost-plus (CCDC 3), unit price (CCDC 4) and guaranteed maximum price.
Who is responsible for design errors in design-build?
Under design-build, the design-builder hires the architects and engineers, so errors in the design are generally the design-builder’s to fix at its own cost. The grey area is anything you provide yourself, such as your own consultants’ work or design you hand over. CCDC 14 – 2026 deals with this in GC 2.6, which, as Fasken summarizes it, requires the design-builder to identify and address deficiencies in owner-provided design. Your Statement of Requirements is still yours, so gaps in it come back as changes.
Where to start
The delivery method is hard to change once the first contract is signed, so make the choice before the architect is fully engaged: the method decides who the architect works for.
If you’re weighing the options for a site or a building, our development management service starts with exactly this question: the procurement route that fits your scope, schedule, lender and in-house capacity, and the team to run it. Our experience, built at PCL Constructors and Oxford Properties, covers both construction management and lump-sum delivery, and we’ll tell you plainly which suits your project.