OUR EXPERTISE

DCS takes pride in incorporating our support staff into existing client staff and building long term professional relationships through hard work, reliability, trust and integrity.  For over 35 years, our staff has frequently helped our Nevada clients to successfully deliver their projects by providing Staff Augmentation to crews assigned to various construction projects throughout the State. As a result of the diversity of our staff, we provide our Nevada clients experienced personnel with a variety of services to meet their needs. Our staff has a wide range of experience working with clients and owners at various entities including the City, County and State DOT.

DCS is proud to have some of the most experienced technical inspection staff in the industry today.  Our team has successfully performed project inspections on some of the largest complex projects ever constructed in Nevada.  We provide competent professional inspection staff who are formally trained with current industry standards and specifications in all facets of highway construction.  Our inspection specialties include Structures, Asphalt Paving, Portland Cement Concrete Paving (PCCP), Earthwork, Drainage Improvements, Intelligent Transportation System (ITS), Mechanically Stabilized Earth Walls, Retaining Walls, Utilities, Water Pollution Control Management, and Traffic Control to name a few.         

DCS takes pride in managing all facets of Construction Management, including project material quality control. Many of our team members are certified materials testers and are proficient in performing all required project testing to meet compliance requirements including project specifications and testing frequencies. Additionally, our professional staff has managed the quality acceptance for materials for several decades and knows how to apply testing results to the construction performed.  We understand the critical nature of accuracy, process consistency, frequencies, with thorough and timely documentation.  For over 35 years, DCS has self-performed the quality acceptance for both inspection and materials testing on all projects we have managed. Owning and operating two fully functioning mobile materials laboratories, DCS not only understands materials testing, but we are industry leaders in managing construction materials for quality acceptance.

Several team members on DCS’s core staff began their careers on construction survey crews establishing grades, elevations and alignment controls, roadway appurtenance positioning and offsets, bridge controls, storm drains, sewers, utilities, grade controls and slope staking for subgrade and aggregate base. While working with the contractor’s field staff, DCS ensures everyone is understanding of survey needs, schedules, frequencies, and terminology. No contractor or project under construction should wait for survey requests to be completed or have insufficient controls and inadequate information to construct the project. By managing the construction survey, we ensure clear project layout requirements meeting the project planned objective, reducing conflicts, and mitigating any potential delay claims to the client.

Our staff at DCS has decades of experience in Construction Contract Administration and as a result, most of our key staff have significant knowledge and experience in reviewing contractor schedules for accuracy and overall constructability.  Reviewing and managing the contractor’s construction schedule is a major factor in helping to ensure that projects are completed on time and within budget. Understanding critical path items or controlling items of work and identifying potential schedule issues early, as well as working with the contractor to avoid scheduling issues or inaccuracies, is critical in helping to deliver projects in a timely manner.

The accurate and timely documentation of construction activities, quantity calculations, materials testing results and daily discussions on construction projects are critical to our client needs in successfully delivering transportation construction projects. At DCS, we understand the importance of Document Control and we have technical and professional staff with experience in several different Document Control systems such as Microsoft “SharePoint”, the City of Las Vegas’ “Masterworks”, Clark County’s “Autodesk Build”, NDOT’s “AASHTOWare Products (AWP)” and NDOT’s “EDOC” filing structure. In addition, many of our core team members have attended documentation training from NDOT’s Construction Office School.

DCS’s Constructability Review team is committed to meeting the needs of our clients by providing competent, experienced, and knowledgeable staff that will take charge of the assigned responsibilities. We are willing to meet in the field or office to discuss and identify all potential major issues before they happen, saving time and money to the client.  The independent bid-ability/constructability review activities typically performed by the team are as follows:

Attend a kickoff meeting with the client to determine expectations of the review.
• Site visits to review existing conditions, construction access, and potential staging areas.
• Perform a review of the project plans and specifications for the purpose of accuracy, utility interferences, maintenance of traffic, inconsistencies or ambiguities, etc.
• Provide a comment matrix to the client staff and the design engineer of review findings with potential resolutions.
• Attend meeting with client staff and design engineer to discuss findings and potential resolutions.
• Perform a back check of the plans and specifications following the resolutions of the previously submitted comments and provide a final comment matrix of the findings to the client.

Fortunately, claims do not often take place and project issues are typically resolved at the lowest level of project personnel as possible.  However, there are occasions when a project administration team and contractor cannot agree on project issues and those issues can be escalated for review and comment to higher levels of personnel.  Our firm understands the importance and effectiveness of Partnering and the resolution of issues promptly at the lowest level saves everyone, including the project, both time and money. DCS has worked extensively with attorneys and project managers in defense of their client position in preparation for potential arbitration and litigation. With a combined experience of more than 100 years in construction, we understand the importance of Partnering and concise documentation are the keys to successful resolution of any conflict.  We are proud to say that in over 35 years of doing business, DCS has never received a formal claim on any project we have administered or augmented.  The management team at DCS have all received formal training on project defense including Partnering, Claim Avoidance and Negotiations, and Dispute Resolution, which makes us the team of choice.