"Is there a way with SCCM to partition the hard drives on new dells without wiping out the utility partition? Ideally it would delete a d: partition if it exists as well."

I use MDT and in the task sequence
I created a script that calls diskpart cmd's. This selects the drive and the partition and reformats it.
select disk 0
select partition 2
active
format quick
assign letter c
exit

disable the format task in my task sequence.