Identifying Problems Encountered When Contracting With the Naval Facilities Engineering Command By Donald E. Whitehurst Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for a Master of Science in Civil Engineering from the University of Washington Autumn 1991 T254005 6/ University of Washington Abstract Identifying Problems Encountered When Contracting With The Naval Facilities Engineering Command by Donald E. Whitehurst Chairperson of the Professor Jimmie W. Hinze Supervisory Committee: Department of Civil Engineering Problems encountered by contractors when contracting with the Naval Facilities Engineering Command were investigated. The purpose of this research was to identify and investigate what contractors perceive to be barriers to achieving the goal of constructing quality facilities for the Navy, on time and for a fair price. The finding are that contractors are generally satisfied with the quality, ability, and fairness of NAVFACs personnel, the bidding format, payment policy, and emphasis on safety. Contractors are generally dissatisfied with NAVFACs timeliness in conforming contract modifications, providing timely directions on field problems, and clarifying bid document ambiguities. Many contractors also believe NAVFAC lacks sufficient knowledge and awareness of the construction business. Smaller contractors tended to be more dissatisfied with NAVFAC contracts than did larger contractors. Contractors also consider NAVFACs value engineering program to be ineffective and consider the contractor quality control program (CQC-West) to be too costly, too subjective, and overly restrictive. NAVFAC is encouraged to accept contractors as partners rather than adversaries. NAVFAC should contract with contractors to perform value engineering and constructability reviews during project design. The burdensome CQC-West program should be discontinued and replaced with NAVFAC efforts to select only quality contractors for contracts.