The Missouri General Assembly passed House Bill 2474 (the “Statute”) this past legislative session, which took effect August 28, 2026.[1] The Statute authorizes Missouri political subdivisions to utilize the progressive design-build (“PDB”) construction delivery method through a phased selection process, and it lowers the threshold for political subdivisions to use “traditional” (i.e. non-PDB) design-build delivery methods for noncivil works from $7 million to $2.5 million (traditional design-build delivery methods can be used for civil works projects of any size).[2] The PDB provisions are codified at RSMo Section 67.5060.15, and they expire August 28, 2036.[3]
PDB is a construction delivery method that is primarily based on a two-step engagement whereby an owner and design-builder exchange ideas, budgetary constraints, overall program information, and expectations to develop the design for the owner’s project. Once the design reaches the point at which it is feasible to provide a reasonably accurate construction pricing estimate, the design-builder and owner negotiate the terms of the agreement that governs the construction phase of the project.
Under the Statute, PDB procurement must follow a two-phase, qualitative selection process. In phase I, a political subdivision solicits and evaluates qualifications from potential design-builder partners and short-lists 2 or 3 design-builders to proceed to the next phase. Phase II of the process requires a political subdivision to solicit and evaluate each short-listed design-builder’s approach to design development, preconstruction services, and construction delivery means and methods, ultimately scoring and ranking each short-listed firm according to pre-established criteria and proceeding with the highest scoring firm.[4] Phase I evaluations cannot include any consideration of price or fees (for preconstruction or construction services), and in phase II political subdivisions may consider pricing for preconstruction phase services only.[5]
After phase II selection is complete and the design-builder with whom the political subdivision will work is identified, subsection 15(8)(g) of the Statute supplies a hint of a construction pricing mechanic: the design-builder and the political subdivision collaborate to advance the design to a level sufficient to establish a fixed contract amount or guaranteed maximum price, and then, “Upon acceptance of the price and contract terms, the parties may amend the contract to authorize construction.”[6] The subsection, however, does not address a failure of the parties to come to an agreement (an event colloquially termed “off-ramping”), and the issues that come out of that off-ramping, despite the existence of similar considerations in the “traditional” (i.e. non-PDB) design-build context described earlier in the Statute.
The Statute leaves unanswered a few key practical questions that any reasonable public works director might ask in the event of an off-ramping, namely: Can the political subdivision keep the drawings if it walks away? Does it owe the design-builder anything other than regular course payments for the preconstruction efforts that produced no construction phase? Can the design-builder that developed the design bid on the construction phase?
The one termination provision in the PDB subsection of the Statute sits earlier in the process. Under subsubsection 15(8)(f), following Phase II evaluation and scoring a political subdivision “may enter into negotiations with the highest-ranked design-builder to establish a preconstruction services agreement. If the parties are unable to reach an agreement, the political subdivision may terminate negotiations and commence negotiations with the next highest-ranked design-builder”.[7] That provision governs the failure to sign a preconstruction agreement at the end of Phase II, before any design work is performed, but it does not provide guidance for a situation where, after months of collaborative design, the political subdivision decides to off-ramp the design-builder.
Political subdivisions weighing PDB do not have to speculate about these questions in the abstract. A large public owner publicly worked through them last spring.
The Maryland Transportation Authority (“MDTA”) exercised a contractual off-ramp on the Francis Scott Key Bridge reconstruction in April 2026.[8] It remains a clear, publicly documented instance of the PDB off-ramp mechanism operating. MDTA engaged in the preconstruction portion of the PDB delivery method with its selected design-builder beginning in August 2024.[9] By March 2026, the design-builder’s developed design reached 70% completion, which allowed the firm and MDTA to commence negotiations on the full construction phase pricing.[10] MDTA ultimately declined to proceed into construction with that firm due to disagreements over the anticipated construction price and timeline.[11]
First, MDTA did not achieve a clean break with its off-ramp. Remaining tasks authorized under the design-builder’s $73-million Phase 1 contract include driving foundation piles and building a temporary trestle to support construction activity.[12] Second, and more costly: MDTA deemed the off-ramped design-builder ineligible to compete for the new design-build contract, along with most of its subcontractors and consultants hired under its initial $73 million scope of work.[13] The team that advanced the design to 70 percent, and its supply chain, were excluded from bidding the work they had designed. MDTA re-bid to firms pricing another contractor’s drawings.
Missouri political subdivisions should not read MDTA’s outcome as a disaster. MDTA has said publicly that the entire rebuild can be completed for under $5 billion, less than the estimates that surfaced during the failed second-phase negotiations.[14] Exercising the off-ramp appears to have served MDTA’s interests. But MDTA had sophisticated counsel, a contract that delineated the unwinding, and the institutional capacity to absorb a failed first phase and restart. Missouri’s new $2.5 million threshold for utilizing PDB reaches political subdivisions that may have all, some, or none of those, such as school and water districts, and small municipalities.
The cost of off-ramping is added cost and delay. On the Francis Scott Key Bridge project the MDTA removed the most informed bidder and most of its subcontractors from the re-procurement. A political subdivision that off-ramps and then rebids is asking firms to price another team’s drawings, and firms price unfamiliarity as risk. Political subdivisions should decide, before the design phase begins, whether the off-ramped design-builder and its subcontractors may compete for the construction award, and say so in both the agreement and the later solicitation.
Key Takeaways
The preconstruction service agreement contemplated for Phase II is the document that controls the off-ramping process. Subsection 15(8)(g) only addresses acceptance, not rejection, of the price.[15] The Statute does not provide an orderly separation process for parties that fail to come to an agreement for the construction phase.
The preconstruction service agreement should price preconstruction in milestones that are earned when completed. This converts an argument about unused design into a defined number.
Decide re-procurement eligibility before design starts. Off-ramping removes the most informed bidder and, on the Francis Scott Key Bridge project, most of its subcontractors and consultants.
The Bottom Line
What did not change: the Statute leaves the “traditional”, non-PDB, three-stage design-build process, its stipend requirement, and its design-rights bargain intact for political subdivisions that continue to use that method, and it lowered the project size threshold for the traditional design-build delivery method to $2.5 million, a level achievable by a larger number of Missouri political subdivisions.
What changed is the allocation of drafting responsibility. By authorizing progressive design-build without prescribing what happens when the price does not close, the Missouri General Assembly left the most consequential moment in the delivery method entirely to the parties rather than to a statutory framework. In traditional design-build, a political subdivision that says nothing about design rights still gets the statutory bargain. In progressive design-build, a party that says nothing likely gets nothing. The agreement between the political subdivision and the design-builder is no longer one document among several governing the project. In the absence of a statutory off-ramping procedure, it is the definitive place the rules exist at all, and it should be negotiated.
[1] H.B. 2474, 102nd Gen. Assemb., 2d Reg. Sess. (Mo. 2024); Revised Statutes of Missouri § 67.5060.15(1) (effective Aug. 28, 2026).
[2] Revised Statutes of Missouri § 67.5060.15(1)–(2); Revised Statutes of Missouri § 67.5060.1(2) (lowering noncivil works threshold to $2.5 million).
[3] Revised Statutes of Missouri § 67.5060.15(10) (“This subsection shall expire on August 28, 2036.”).
[4] Revised Statutes of Missouri § 67.5060.15(1) (“Any political subdivision may use the progressive design-build construction delivery method . . . .”).
[5] Revised Statutes of Missouri § 67.5060.15(8)(a)–(e) (Phase I qualifications-based shortlisting); Revised Statutes of Missouri § 67.5060.15(8)(f) (Phase II evaluation and scoring).
[6] Revised Statutes of Missouri § 67.5060.15(8)(g).
[7] Revised Statutes of Missouri § 67.5060.15(8)(f).
[8] Maryland Transportation Authority, Press Release, MDTA Announces Off-Ramp Decision on Key Bridge Phase 1 Contract (Apr. 2026).
[9] Id.
[10] Id.
[11] Id.
[12] Id.
[13] Maryland Transportation Authority Request for Qualifications KB-4907-000: Key Bridge Rebuild Main Span & Marine Approaches, at Section 1.15.
[14] Id. at Section 1.4(A); see also Maryland Transportation Authority, Press Release, MDTA Announces Off-Ramp Decision on Key Bridge Phase 1 Contract (Apr. 2026).
[15] Revised Statutes of Missouri § 67.5060.15(8)(g).
