HR0077 103RD GENERAL ASSEMBLY

HR0077 LRB103 30439 MST 56870 r

HOUSE RESOLUTION

WHEREAS, Illinois is home to nearly 23,000 thousand licensed engineers and surveyors and hundreds of companies that employ them, and Illinoisans rely on these licensed professionals to protect the public health, life, and safety; and

WHEREAS, Engineers serve as the backbone of our public infrastructure, protecting our drinking water and ensuring that our buildings are safe and our roadways and bridges are secure; and

WHEREAS, Illinois has set it to be the law of the land to utilize qualifications first when determining which professionals and firms should provide these critical services to our citizens; and

WHEREAS, The Qualifications-Based Selection process outperforms the national performance in cost growth (3% growth versus 6% growth) and in schedule growth (7% growth versus 10% growth); based on the analysis of the projects in a recent study, there is a strong association between the use of Qualifications-Based Selection and the quality of construction documents developed by the design team and the final cost and schedule performance; and

WHEREAS, While there are specific value-added benefits from the application of Qualifications-Based Selection procurement methods to all projects, the advantage, in addition to cost and schedule savings, is particularly evident for complex projects; these are projects that can especially benefit from experienced and stable design teams comprised of high-quality providers; complexity can emerge from numerous points in a project, including community engagement, political or social sensitivities, technical challenges in design or in constructions, or management and collaboration of project participants; and

WHEREAS, From the agency-client perspective, Qualifications-Based Selection projects achieve a greater degree of consistency in terms of project success than non-Qualifications-Based Selection projects; and

WHEREAS, Qualifications-Based Selection leads to increased innovation on projects; innovation is a cornerstone of advancing project solutions and developing better solutions for clients; innovation can occur on projects of any size or in any sector; a recent study found that projects incorporating Qualifications-Based Selection have a greater likelihood of producing innovative solutions; this is often based on firms having greater opportunities to explore innovations and collaborations when cost is not the driving factor in design team selection; and

WHEREAS, The Illinois State Toll Highway Authority, the Illinois Department of Transportation, the Capital Development Board, and hundreds of county and municipal governments all utilize Qualifications-Based Selection to ensure the highest quality of design and construction and to deliver their programs on-time and on-budget; and

WHEREAS, Qualifications-Based Selection is proven to develop more diverse engineering teams and provide greater opportunity to diverse companies; and

WHEREAS, It is the policy of the State of Illinois to maintain the integrity of these essential professions; therefore, be it

RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE ONE HUNDRED THIRD GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we hereby re-affirm the long-standing policy of the State of Illinois to rely on qualifications first when determining which professionals and firms provide these critical services to our citizens.