A typical U.S. federal courthouse project has four core development phases: planning, programming, design, and construction. Planning establishes the court’s operational needs; programming turns them into a space plan and design objectives; design develops drawings and specifications; and construction organizes the people and materials needed to build. The phases provide a useful framework, but procurement choices and early site work can change how they overlap. The framework comes from the federal judiciary’s U.S. Courts Design Guide, whose latest edition was approved in March 2021; state and local courthouse projects may follow different requirements.
1. Planning: establish what the courthouse must support
Planning assesses court workloads, staffing, procedures, organizational arrangements, and administrative requirements. It answers why a new facility or renovation is needed and what court operations it must accommodate. This is more than choosing a site or setting a construction budget: it begins with understanding how the court works and what the project needs to support.
2. Programming: turn operational needs into a space plan
Programming translates functional requirements into a space-needs plan, sometimes called a “housing” plan, and defines the project’s design objectives. As the U.S. Courts Design Guide puts it, “The programming phase translates functional requirements into a space needs (housing) plan and defines the project’s design objectives.”
For the project team, this phase creates the brief that guides design. It is not yet detailed architectural design: it clarifies what spaces and functions are required and what objectives the design must meet.
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3. Design: develop and refine the drawings and specifications
During design, the project team develops drawings and specifications in an iterative process, adding detail as decisions are made. The Design Guide describes it this way: “The design phase develops drawings and specifications for constructing the facility through an iterative process of increasing detail.”
Court users, the General Services Administration (GSA), and consultants must weigh functional requirements and costs. Courthouse-specific considerations include security and circulation: how people move through the building and how the facility supports court operations. Design decisions can affect both the building’s size and construction cost, so coordination among users and partner agencies matters.
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A 2024 U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) report modeled six recently or nearly completed courthouses and one planned courthouse under the 2021 Design Guide, comparing the results with the 2007 guide. In those selected projects, the modeled application of the newer guide increased average building size by 5.8% and average construction cost by 11.9%; GAO attributed some of the modeled change to increased circulation requirements. These are modeled comparisons for the selected projects, not actual cost overruns or a forecast for every courthouse. See GAO report GAO-25-106724, published October 16, 2024.
4. Construction: organize resources to realize the design
Construction organizes labor and materials to implement the design. Depending on the project, schedules may show site preparation, utility work, environmental review, or other enabling tasks as separate milestones. Those activities can happen before full building construction and should not be confused with the four core development phases.
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How procurement changes the sequence
The four phases describe project development; the delivery method determines how contracts and work are arranged. The federal Design Guide describes three common approaches:
| Delivery method | Contract arrangement and sequence | When design and construction may overlap | Builder input |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design-bid-build | Design and construction are contracted separately; bidding follows design. | The sequence is design, bidding, then construction. | Construction input generally comes after design is completed and the work is bid. |
| Design-build | One entity provides both design and construction. | Parts of design and construction can overlap. | The integrated entity coordinates design and construction. |
| Construction manager as constructor (CMc) | A construction manager joins during design and later assumes construction responsibility. | Builder involvement begins during design; the extent of overlap depends on the project. | The CMc advises on schedule, cost, and constructability during design. |
These procurement approaches change handoffs and coordination; they do not remove the underlying need to plan, program, design, and construct. Bidding is an important project activity, but it is not a fifth core phase in the Design Guide’s four-phase development model. Delivery-method descriptions are in the U.S. Courts Design Guide.
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Why a project schedule may not look like four clean blocks
Public project schedules often include approvals, site selection, acquisition, procurement, and mobilization alongside design and construction. GSA’s Chattanooga U.S. Courthouse project page, last updated September 21, 2026, describes environmental review and public participation, site selection and acquisition, architect-engineer procurement, design, early-work planning, and construction mobilization. As of that update, the project was in design and early work was anticipated in 2027; those dates describe that project at that point, not a general courthouse schedule.
The Fort Lauderdale U.S. Courthouse project illustrates how early work can precede full construction. Its schedule lists design from March 2023 through October 2024, utility relocation in December 2023, limited construction beginning in January 2024 after site preparation and seawall work, and full construction beginning in September 2024. This is one project example, not a rule that all courthouse projects overlap phases.
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