Mr. McConnell arranged for the private donors who would be paying for numerous enhancements to this showpiece public park to use exactly the same front end contract documents as The Public Building Commission of Chicago would be using for the parking garage and other foundation structures above the railroad tracks running beneath the new park. In this way the generous private donors retained authority to value engineer their contributed structures so as to stay within donor budgets. After the contracts with the donors' preferred builders were priced and signed, the donors made a gift to the City of Chicago of both their signed contracts and the money to pay for the donor construction.

Once the donor construction contracts were assigned to the City, The Public Building Commission was able to take over administration of both the public and private portions of the construction project, without violating statutory public bidding requirements.

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Mr. McConnell represented The Public Building Commission of Chicago in the discovery, negotiation, documentation and payment of the settlement of subcontractor claims for $33 million of extra work and design errors and omissions in the construction of Millennium Park. The negotiated settlement was for less than 41 cents on the dollar claimed.

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Lessons Learned:

Innovative use of front end contract documents can make it possible to maintain donor value engnieering prerogatives and still permit government administration of construction, without running afoul of public bidding requirements.