by Zigmund Rubel, AIA and Michael Bernard, AIA

Summary: Between 2006 and 2007, the AIA challenged our profession to consider how we could improve project delivery outcomes with integrated project delivery (IPD). Some would say in the last three years there has been little progress, while others would point to the new contract documents that support increased collaboration through IPD.

This article, one of a series, juxtaposes IPD’s aspiration to the dependable realities of practitioners. Exemplar projects will be discussed on how the theory became the reality. The contract administrating curmudgeon needs to embrace IPD with the same fervor as the Kool-Aid sipping evangelist if this new method is to work. The benefits and challenges need to be reviewed, explored, and discussed on how it can be applied for our profession to us becoming leaders in this movement.

These articles are written to engage you, regardless of which point of the IPD spectrum you’re viewing from. The outcome of this conversation, it is hoped, will contribute to positive momentum to our industry and profession.

Aspiration for the profession and industry
IPD is intended to transform the design and building industry. Traditional practice is focused on protecting the interest of the individual entities, e.g., owner, designer, and builder. IPD embodies the mindset of “Best for Project and Best for Firm”—meaning that the collective approach brings benefits to all. There is a window of opportunity for our profession to shift our mindset and add value to the entire project timeline. Fast-track delivery is one of the best examples of a theory successfully tested and incorporated into useful practice in modern construction history. IPD is the industry’s next business response to project delivery that meets our clients’ demand for buildings to be faster, cheaper, and of better quality.

Partnering or partitioning?
Complacency is impeding our profession’s future improvement. There are several reasons why in practice we perform certain tasks in a specific sequence. Our professional liability insurance carriers have protected us as they have separated us from what could be a collaborative collegial process where job satisfaction can rise and project performance skyrocket.

There is a new attitude required among architects and contractors that breaks these stereotypes. We need to break down former attitudes and create a level playing field in terms of perception of worth for various roles—we have to believe that the person carrying the tool belt is equally vital to our project as our firm’s staff. Everyone adds value to the project. Most of us consult a colleague when we come across a difficult situation. These interactions vary from how we best respond to a request for proposal to how we detail a design condition using some new material. With IPD, our colleague group is significantly augmented to include the people ultimately capable of building the project. Using IPD, the days of the master builder have become those of the master collaborators.

Enriching professional knowledge through relationships
Our interaction in architecture is through projects. These interactions with clients, consultants, builder, and trades are where the value of our experiences equate to the value to our firms. IPD intrinsically builds these relationships into the delivery process. This is a critical point, as we look at embracing building information modeling, where there is no clear structure of who owns the model or which model governs. There are two basic models: design and construction. Both of these models have different purposes with the same desired outcome of facilitating the design and construction of the project. The models need to be compatible to give the project the value they both have.

In our new world of accountability and predictability, we need the constructor with the designers to reduce the reactivity and allow us to model it once and detail it right from the outset. To leverage our unique skills as generalists, it would make sense to expand the team of specialists through those focused on building and system-specific know how. Assembling an integrating team is the first act of IPD.

One size fits all does not fit IPD
All IPD projects are custom responses to their unique requirements. There are some projects that can be done effectively and efficiently in a design, bid, and build environment. These projects need a market response to prescriptive requirements. There are success stories from the traditional project delivery camp, and they will continue. Success from a traditional delivery is different than those achieved on an IPD project. IPD is best applied to projects where flexibility—in process, speed, and cost containment—reveals the proverbial sweet spot.

Collaboration is a fundamental requirement of integration. Research from the Construction Industry Institute has shown that collaborative projects have fewer claims, shorter schedules, and more job satisfaction. IPD promises to provide these kinds of results predictably. The metrics for success are defined at the beginning of an IPD project. The qualitative desires get balanced with the quantitative realities of any project with more certainty. The cross purposed filters of quality and quantitative values are best determined and managed by the larger project team. Not every project requires this kind of dexterity, and the traditional delivery method can best provide value to those projects. The proposed framework of new project phases and timing of participant involvement is a logical path to improve our current professional processes.

Dependability of the small practice and small projects
Small projects often follow a process in which schematic design moves forward concurrent with the selection of a qualified general contractor. In the ideal negotiated design-bid-build arrangement, the owner, architect, and builder collaborate to identify the means by which they will bring the project to fruition.

Transition from this tried-and-true (and often successful) delivery method may require the small practice to make significant structural changes to preserve access to work and to stay current with IPD, BIM, and other current trends in practice. How a small firm survives and adapts in an environment of evolving delivery methodology may require rethinking business models (even those that have been successful in the recent past) as well as the wholesale assessment of its staffing needs.

To provide a point of reference, more than 80 percent of all established architecture firms consist of 10 or fewer employees. The familiar small firm structure and process is one in which a principal kicks off a project with the assistance of a junior designer. This structure allows the principal to explore design alternatives with a relatively low-cost and less-experienced employee. If the project should go on hold at the end of a preliminary design phase (as is often the case), the risk of overspending design fees is theoretically limited.

To achieve the same project by implementing a form of IPD, the delivery strategy would be significantly different. Early in its adoption of IPD, the small practice will rely on the wisdom and practical experience of a seasoned project leader.

Redefining the role of the small practice
We have not yet identified the characteristics that define the value of IPD implementation for the small project in terms of scale and complexity. Such criteria will be useful in helping establish which projects are appropriate for IPD.

Perhaps the most daunting challenge facing the principal of the small practice is the need to change our own job descriptions to stay in step with rapidly changing delivery methodologies like IDP. We often have chosen to work for ourselves because we value the luxury and ability to make our own decisions, to be the masters of our destiny, to take credit for our own effort (be it large or small). But IPD requires the small practice principal to share ownership of the final product. Can we take this bold step? And if we do so, are we assured of receiving credit for authorship commensurate with our newly-assumed risk?

Risk assessment and assignment
Small-practice principals accept the reality that successful practice requires dexterous juggling of many tasks. One of these is the careful assessment of risk and liability, as distilled and expressed in a carefully crafted agreement for design and construction services. Allocating the necessary time to prepare such agreements is often a challenge for the small project practitioner and/or the small practice.

So, another question: How is risk mitigated for the small practice that implements IPD? Appropriate risk allocation has not yet been defined generically or consistently (either through institutional guidelines or case studies) for most projects of any size. Would a small firm, whose profit margins are probably typically narrow, willingly volunteer to serve as a test case for liability in a relatively new delivery methodology? What is the legal mechanism that will assign risk appropriately and that will appeal to the owners, architects, and contractors alike?

Collaborating before the collaboration
Is the small practice at risk of becoming sidelined if it fails to add IPD to its repertoire of delivery methods? The small practitioner may fear that access to the current range of project types will become increasingly limited as market share is carved up by owners, architects, and contractors who embrace IPD. Creating a network of collaborators (and corresponding agreement templates) might serve well as a means of fostering the propagation of IPD in the small project arena.

The small architectural practice finds its counterpart in the myriad small general contractors with which they already informally collaborate. How do the small architect and small builder find a common voice that effectively communicates the benefits of IPD to small project clients?

Staff development: as emerging professionals grow more aware of IPD, how will the small practice keep talented staff “down on the farm?” How will the small practice attract and retain talented staff, while balancing evolving project delivery methods?

Despite what the small practice decides, the fact is that change is happening now. The small practice needs a means of understanding its value in the IPD paradigm as well as the risks that they can reasonably assume. These new methods of delivering projects can become opportunities for collaboration and better design. The value of the small practice is in the intimate relationships characteristic of the service they provide. The people in an IPD model are what make the difference in the project’s delivery. This might be the opportunity that the small practice principal has been waiting for.