“New York is a laggard in design-build,” said Mitchell L. Moss, director of the Rudin Center for Transportation Policy and Management at New York University. “There’s really no justification; it’s widely used across the country. New York hurts itself by not having it available for use in New York City.”

The stakes are huge for the city, which faces an ever-growing to-do list of capital projects to address its aging and overtaxed transportation and infrastructure system. Polly Trottenberg, the city’s transportation commissioner, said that if design-build were an option, her department could save as much as $330 million on a half-dozen of its biggest and most expensive road and bridge projects, including a $1.7 billion rehabilitation of a crucial 1.5-mile stretch of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.

“We want to spend taxpayer dollars fixing bridges and roadways and not on change orders and procurement lawyers,” she said.

Ms. Trottenberg and other supporters of design-build acknowledged that it might not be the right choice for every project, but said it should be an available option because of the potential savings in time and money.

But some state legislators, state labor leaders, construction industry groups and others have raised concerns about expanding the use of design-build. These critics say it could lead to fewer public sector jobs as more design and engineering work is contracted out by government agencies as opposed to being done in-house, and could allow for a more subjective selection process as contracts are evaluated for the “best value” and not simply the lowest bid.