“Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) is a project delivery approach that integrates people, systems, business structures and practices into a process that 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 design, fabrication, and construction.”
There are two key elements of IPD: collaborative design process and sharing of financial risks or ewards. IPD really came about as a response to the well-known 2004 white paper issued by the Construction User’s Round Table which graphs the need to shift the constructor’s interactive design efforts earlier in the project in order to avoid costly design changes later on, especially during construction.
Decades of construction declines since the 1960s should have positioned the construction industry to make an abrupt change. This was a challenge to the industry. During the 1980s, manufacturing industries in the United States were able to implement continuous improvement practices that allowed for huge gains in productivity, keeping the U.S. competitive worldwide. There are many well documented examples of these improvements in automation, material handling, and numerous other phases of manufacturing. This period of increased productivity in the manufacturing sector was accompanied by a flat productivity curve in the construction sector.
While most manufacturing processes are wholly owned and controlled by a single entity, for example, Caterpillar, Tesla, Ford or GM, the design and construction industry has historically and perhaps more accurately consisted in two distinct parts: the design industry and the construction industry. This split project path has been the major roadblock to the improvement of productivity within the industry. This fragmentation of the industry resulted in inefficient interactions, conflicting goals, and a general lack of cooperation as the separate entities tried to maximize their own benefits on each project.
Fortunately, during the late-1980s and early-1990s, the shortfalls of a split industry were recognized as multifaceted ownership issues in the design and construction of a project demanded productivity improvements. This recognition was a direct result of the documentation of instances in which “partnering” had substantially improved project outcomes. Through partnering principles and practices, projects were able to achieve improvements in cost, schedule, quality, and safety. It soon became apparent that the sequential way in which the many contracts associated with a single project were being implemented was virtually guaranteeing that improvements would be difficult at best. As a result, many of the partnering principles were taken and applied to various forms of alternative project delivery procurement.
Initially, there were legal roadblocks that prevented design-build from being used to its full potential. A few pioneers pursued revision of these restricting statutes to include the ability to use different forms of project delivery that would allow for a teaming process. Even after some of these roadblocks were removed, it soon became apparent that collaborative processes were poorly defined, largely undocumented, and met with much resistance from within the walls of the separate design and construction industries. For several years, getting the design professional and the general contractor to work together during the design process was challenging. But improvements in productivity, reduced costs, and shorter schedules were becoming hallmarks of the projects that used these collaborative approaches and more of the industry began to embrace the collaborative ways. Owners, seeing the benefits, started choosing those companies that achieved superior performance using the new delivery methods.
The Birth of Advanced Integrated Practice
This is where AIP enters the picture.
Early in the first quarter in 2010, the Alliance for Construction Excellence, or ACE, assembled construction professionals Gary Aller of ACE, Michael Jackson of HDR, Terry Abair of Sundt, Rob Smalley of UMEC and me to establish and document a “cookbook of recipes” to help improve efforts in our industry for both design and construction. Three out of the five initial team members had recently completed the award winning ASU Cronkite School of Journalism facility in Phoenix, Ariz., which was delivered by an integrated design-build team led by Sundt Construction with design services provided jointly by HDR & Erhlich Architects. UMEC was one of the critical subcontractors to provide services to Sundt during the preconstruction phase on through construction.
During the development of the team’s process, the ACE team wanted to define the design and construction activities which delivered the Cronkite project on time and meeting budget, all while using “IPD-ish” methods during the execution of the project. The team struggled with what to call the new method. Because of copyright or trademark issues, IPD could not be used anywhere in the title of the cookbook. Of course, there are many cookbooks and thousands of recipes, but only a few good ones. ACE’s cookbook needed to be the one that provides the best-known recipes and proven concepts that people want to keep going to for guidance, because they produce the best results. So this early team termed the cookbook, Advanced Integrated Practice, or AIP.
AIP is intended to be a compilation of processes and tools to address the increased team collaboration effort and identify partnering techniques, allowing for various forms of delivery methods to be used for a project delivery, such as construction manager-at-risk, design-build and integrated project delivery as well as the utilization of tools used in the execution of design and construction on a project. ACE is an educational outreach program and a part of the Del E. Webb School of Construction, the School of Sustainable Engineering & the Built Environment, and the Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering at Arizona State University, coined the “advanced integrated practice” moniker in 2010 as a beacon for the industry so it could be used by both public and private construction projects within the construction industry.
An effort to complete the AIP Program was made in 2011 by a select group of people, consisting of owners, design and construction industry professionals, which documented the process and established guidelines to allow teams to function within a collaborative environment, identifying the challenges faced by the team members, and then by providing solutions to deliver projects using integrative techniques within the various delivery methods. The collaborative effort to identify these processes culminated in an eBook, Advanced Integrated Practice - “Create a Culture of Deep Collaboration,” published by ACE at Arizona State University in March of 2013.
ACE had developed BIM guidelines in 2008 for the construction industry. This began the process of identifying key software, methodologies, processes and tools to allow the use of BIM on designs for building projects. ACE continued improving this manual through a collaborative effort of designers, constructors and owners to produce the update on the BIM and VDC book in 2013. The book is a resource to examine the tools and process guidelines used by owners, designers and constructors on how BIM and VDC is applied at each of the building phases, from concept through turnover to the owner, along with specific suggested deliverables. It also addresses the use of BIM and VDC during the building phases for planning, phasing, contract development, detailing, cost control, scheduling and examines uses for applications and techniques.
As an integral part of AIP, ACE documented the design-assist process originally in 2007 which was developed through a collaborative effort of construction professionals. The process would also be used within the CMAR, design-build, or IPD methodologies. Design-assist was identified early on as a collaborative team-oriented project delivery method that capitalizes on the benefits of early engagement of design-assist subcontractors. Its objective is to minimize design and constructability related issues prior to construction by maximizing overall value. By 2013, ACE improved the process and included this as a part of the AIP Program, in response to owner’s needs to improve construction, reduce risk and manage cost due to challenges during construction. This book focuses on the benefits, challenges, and leads the reader to evaluate the needs and application of design-assist on owner’s projects.
