Co-location is perhaps the single most important factor needed to facilitate a collaborative environment. IPD locates the entire team of architects, engineers, and preconstruction construction planners and estimators with the owner in a common space. This physical proximity fosters enhanced communication, understanding, and respect among team members. This network of relationships facilitates cooperation and joint decision-making.

Equally important is the inclusion of sub-contractors, fabricators, and suppliers in all decisions regarding their disciplines. This translates into nearly continuous work sessions throughout the design process—work sessions that complement and inform one another through a holistic vision of design decision-making.

Holistic Design

Design decisions for each building system are considered in a holistic fashion. Each choice is considered in the context of how it will affect each and every other system. For example, a flat slab concrete structure may allow better integration of ductwork and lower floor-to-floor heights, thereby reducing skin area and hence cost. Holistic design also considers construction sequencing and schedule impact. Schedule compression provides earlier buyout, thus avoiding the impact of cost escalation as well as the benefit of earlier revenue generation by the completed facility.

A building design treated as modular systems of components with multiple applications not only facilitates budget management and construction sequencing, but may result in greater architectural clarity and aesthetic character.

In the Integrated Project Delivery process, direct involvement in the collaborative design process on the part of users and other stakeholders is essential. It permits immediate feedback and avoids the submit-review-revise feedback loops that are inefficient at best. A three-dimensional modeling program shown on a projector can be employed in user workshops. Reviews and requests for planning changes occur in real time. Owner/users clearly see the consequences of each change and can approve or revise them on the spot. This clarity of understanding avoids rework and promotes the buy-in inherent in a collaborative process.

As the project migrates into construction, moving the entire team into a single large construction trailer maintains the continuity and the collaborative spirit. Questions normally posed in the form of RFIs are handled through discussion and consensus between design and construction team members. Confirming RFIs are issued to document decisions. Review of shop drawings can also become a collaborative effort between the owner, architect/engineer, general and subcontractor, fabricator, or supplier. Collaborative meetings focus the strength of diverse expertise, thus providing a coordinated review that minimizes the risk of construction errors or rework.

Lean Processes

The roots of Lean systems and processes are buried deep in the culture of Toyota; its principles were developed over many decades. Today the Toyota Production System (TPS) has made the company the most profitable automobile manufacturer in the world. Lean has been studied by the manufacturing community for some time as its principles were seen as directly applicable in the linear process of manufacturing.

Unnoticed was Toyota’s application of Lean principles to its Product Development Cycle, which is the shortest in the world. Gradually Lean principles, tools, and techniques have been applied to the design process in many organizations. Recently, Lean principles have been adopted by architectural and engineering firms who have realized that their processes contain an enormous amount of waste and yield mediocre results. Surveys of engineers engaged in product development cycles in America have revealed that only 20 percent of their time added value directly to the customer. The comparison to Toyota is stark, where 80 percent of engineering time is spent directly adding value for the customer. This is a staggering disparity.

Lean Tools

The Lean system provides a number of tools and methodologies that only achieve their full potential in the context of an organization that has embraced the core values of Lean as practiced by Toyota. Of the many Lean tools that exist, the following sampling is intended to suggest the potential contained in a Lean approach to design.

Target Value Design: Traditionally, architects and engineers prepare design concepts, often to a phase level required by the contract (i.e. schematic or design development), which are then turned over to a Construction Manager At Risk or General Contractor for estimating. If the estimate exceeds the project budget, a value engineering exercise ensues. Quality and, frequently, the program become casualties of this process.

At project outset, the Target Value Design approach breaks the budget down into its component pieces based upon building systems—such as superstructure, exterior skin, mechanical, electrical, plumping—each of which is, in turn, broken into its subsystems. Designers then design each system and subsystem to its specific budget. In an Integrated Project Delivery scenario, subcontractors and estimators work with the design team to drive decisions toward these budget targets.

This allows the design team to drive the design solution for each system to the budget, adjusting components as needed to achieve the desired value and cost. In the case of complex projects the superstructure, exterior skin, mechanical, electrical, plumbing, and fire protection systems can easily account for as much as 70 percent of total project cost. Bringing these major systems into line goes a long way to ensuring budget conformance.

Last Planner System: Traditionally Gantt and CPM Network scheduling is founded on a planning and control mindset that focuses on task completion. It begins with the first task and “pushes” forward through the timeline with successive tasks under a successor focused mindset. Pull planning starts with an end state in mind and reverse engineers the schedule by focusing on the network of commitments necessary to accomplish it.

Any discrete work effort or task is recognized as having a customer for whom it is performed. Each customer has conditions of satisfaction that must be met for the completed task to serve its purpose. The performer of each task must be competent to perform the task. He must have the tools necessary, and may stipulate that his performance is contingent on receiving certain information or decisions from others. Based on a specific allocation of resources, the individual responsible for the task commits or promises to deliver the task within a specific time frame. The promiser takes individual responsibility to complete the task such that it meets the conditions of satisfaction defined by his customer. In this dynamic environment, if a promiser believes he cannot perform as promised, he immediately notifies his customer and renegotiates the agreement.

The increased relatedness between individuals in a tight knit IPD environment makes breaking promises the exception rather than the rule as social pressure ensures performance.

Set-based Design: Traditional design processes tend to be point-based. System decisions are frozen early in the process. When additional information or owner direction comes to light, this often results in costly rework and compromises schedules.

Set-based design is based on the proposition that for each building system or design question, multiple options should be considered and decision-making kept open for as long as possible. This allows for a deeper understanding of potential options through more thorough development. Delaying decision-making also allows the final decision to be made in the context of the maximum level of information, knowledge, and a complete understanding of how various systems and decisions affect each other.

Building Information Modeling (BIM): Conventional wisdom as portrayed by legacy modeling software requires an early concentration of effort and decision-making. This theory pushes design decisions to be made quickly and without adequate exploration, knowledge and consideration of other systems. It also requires software-trained staff who are highly knowledgeable of building systems and technology. It is thought that this compression of decision-making provides value to the building owner by shortening schedules and saving cost. In reality, both qualities lead to iterative rework that becomes self-defeating for both schedule and cost. A set-based approach delays decision-making until the “last responsible moment” when the investigation of multiple concepts and the maximum application of expertise and knowledge has been possible. This does not require a compromise of schedule and in fact exploits the capabilities of 3-D modeling software and BIM to carry multiple solutions across multiple disciplines.

Knowledge-based Design

The idea of knowledge-based design broadens the context within which the principles of Integrated Project Delivery and Lean operate. Knowledge-based design recognizes that a change in corporate culture is necessary for the methodologies and techniques of IPD and Lean to have a meaningful and lasting effect. This is borne out by the number of American companies that have tried to emulate the Toyota Production System and have had lackluster results because they failed to embrace the philosophical and cultural foundations that underlie Toyota’s success.

This cultural difference is really the consequence of a distinctive value system. Looking at the differences in terms of value systems allows comparison of the Toyota environment and that of other companies. The typical design and production culture can be characterized as structure-based, while the Toyota culture is knowledge-based.

These differences are profound. From a pragmatic implementation perspective great difficulty is involved. Organizations, particularly large organizations, have inherent inertia; individuals are invested in careers and positions in a way that discourages change and innovation of their corporate culture. This has made adoption of the Toyota Way difficult for those have who aspired to reap the benefits of the Toyota system.

Any organization wanting to implement a knowledge-based system must include a thoroughly planned change process. Empirical data has shown that organizations that attempt to implement change on a trial or piecemeal basis fail. This sort of radical cultural change requires total commitment from the very top of the organization on down.

Organizations capable of embracing change and willing to meticulously plan for its implementation will experience the reward of competitive advantage and a culture that values people and the ideas they generate.

By Michael Jackson
Principal, Science+Technology
HDR Architecture Inc.

Reprinted with Permission
HDR Architecture Inc. © 2008