Collaborating to Increase Value and Efficiency, While Reducing Waste

Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) is a project delivery approach that integrates people, systems, business structures, key stakeholders, and practices from planning to close-out. The process collaboratively harnesses the talents and insights of all participants to optimize project results, increase value to the owner, reduce waste and maximize efficiency through all phases of a project. A tightly integrated team, powered by the latest in building information management, technology, and modeling, can prove to be a very powerful project delivery method. For this type of delivery system to succeed, all members of the team must commit to trust and partnership.

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Considerations and Advantages:

• IPD processes and strategies can be implemented to varying degrees depending upon the complexity of a project and an owner’s project goals.
• A project team must be carefully assembled very early on in the process to ensure success.
• All key participants must subscribe to the collaborative effort of establishment clear goals.
• All project stakeholders must be involved and remain involved in the project, and must communicate openly and frequently.
• Key participants must employ appropriate technology to foster collaborative design and construction.

Similar to the Construction Management at Risk approach to project delivery, the owner can benefit from the following IPD advantages:

• Owner receives early cost estimating input, sometimes as early as conceptual design.
• The owner can take advantage of special services such as:
  o   Feasibility studies
  o   Value engineering
  o   Life cycle costs
  o   Identification of long-lead items and their pre-purchase

• Significant time can be saved because the design effort is emphasized and completed earlier in the process, and because construction can begin before the design is fully complete.
• Architectural and engineering fees can be reduced by the early involvement of the specialty contractors.
• Construction costs are minimized by incorporating constructability reviews into the process, and by the designers incorporating materials, methods, and systems that the team knows are more cost effective.
• Operating costs can be reduced by providing opportunities to greatly affect long-term energy and resource use through design.
• Capital costs can be reduced, thanks to clearer and better coordinated construction documents, which should minimize the incidence of change orders that impact both cost and time.
• Misunderstanding between the parties is minimized when the IPD Team works together during the planning stages of the project.
• The owner’s risk is minimized as the IPD Team approach tends to focus on early identification of potential conflicts and issues through the utilization of modeling tools. This early identification results in timely problem solving and resolution of issues through the use of models, as opposed to problem solving in the field and constructed environments.

To learn more about our approach to Integrated Project Delivery, please contact us.

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