Realize Your Team's Highest Potential With Integrated Project Delivery

On November 5, 2007, the AIA introduced Integrated Project Delivery: A Guide (IPD Guide). Developed jointly with the AIA California Council, the IPD Guide helps define the world of IPD as the design and construction industry moves toward more effective and collaborative team approaches.

Technological evolution and owners’ ongoing demand for more effective processes that result in better, faster, less costly, and less adversarial construction projects are driving significant and rapid change in the construction industry. Envision a new world where

• Facilities managers, end users, contractors, and suppliers are all involved at the start of the design process.
• Processes are outcome-driven and decisions are not made solely on a first-cost basis.
• All communications throughout the process are clear, concise, open, transparent, and trusting .
• Designers fully understand the ramifications of their decisions when the decisions are made.
• Risk and reward are value-based and appropriately balanced among all team members over the life of a project .
• The industry delivers a higher-quality and more-sustainable built environment.

This is the world of IPD, which leverages the contribution of knowledge and expertise through early collaboration and use of new technologies, allowing all team members to better realize their highest potentials while expanding the value they provide throughout the project life cycle.

At the core of an integrated project are collaborative, integrated, and productive teams composed of key project participants. Building on early contributions of individual expertise, these teams are guided by principles of trust, transparent processes, effective collaboration, open information sharing, team success tied to project success, shared risk and reward, value-based decision making, and use of full technological capabilities and support. The outcome is the opportunity to design, build, and operate as efficiently as possible. Consider:

Traditional Project Delivery		Integrated Project Delivery
Fragmented, assembled on “just-as-needed” or “minimum-necessary” basis, strongly hierarchical, controlled	Teams	An integrated team entity composed of key project stakeholders, assembled early in the process, open, collaborative
Linear, distinct, segregated; knowledge gathered “just-as-needed”; information hoarded; silos of knowledge and expertise	Process	Concurrent and multilevel; early contributions of knowledge and expertise; information openly shared; stakeholder trust and respect
Individually managed, transferred to the greatest extent possible	Risk	Collectively managed, appropriately shared
Individually pursued; minimum effort for maximum return; (usually) first-cost-based	Compensation/ Reward	Team success tied to project success; value-based
Paper-based, 2-dimensional; analog	Communications/ Technology	Digitally based, virtual; building information modeling (BIM) (3-, 4-, and 5-dimensional)
Encourage unilateral effort; allocate and transfer risk; no sharing	Agreements	Encourage, foster, promote, and support multilateral open sharing and collaboration; risk sharing

The IPD Guide provides information and guidance on IPD principles and techniques and explains how to use IPD methodologies when designing and constructing projects. The guide responds to forces and trends at work in the design and construction industry today. It demonstrates that there is a better way to deliver projects, to transform the status quo (fragmented processes yielding outcomes below expectations) into a collaborative, value-based process delivering high-outcome results to the entire building team.

Benefits to architects include better communication on the critical issues facing practice today; a better process for working with clients, consultants, and builders; value-based compensation models; and appropriate sharing of risk and reward. More importantly, IPD increases the relevance of a profession that exceeds expectations, freeing architects to truly be designers again.

Significant cultural change will be required to achieve these outcomes. Insurance, legal, and educational models will have to change, as must basic practice tools and issues. The AIA is working closely with owners and contractors, including the Construction Users Roundtable, the General Services Administration, and the Associated General Contractors of America, to overcome these challenges.

Let your colleagues know about the IPD Guide and how this important industry shift can improve and streamline projects. To download a copy of the guide or to learn more, please visit www.aia.org/ipdg.