Create a Lean, Construction Building Machine with Integrated Project Management

 All of our experts linked IPD to Lean practices and noted that there are multiple benefits of pairing them. Heinemeier works to transform the built environment through the use of Lean principles, tools, and research. “The benefits of IPD and Lean construction include safer working environments, more efficiently completed projects, increased productivity, and satisfied stakeholders,” he says.

The right tools are essential in making IPD projects successful. “It’s important to utilize tools and processes that allow superintendents and foreman to communicate quickly,” advises Zandy. “The jobs that have the best communication are the most successful.”

Here are just some of the many benefits of IPD for every team member:

• Improved Planning and Management: Collaborative management that takes advantage of multiple team member’s expertise helps achieve optimal solutions. Decision making timelines are shorter since significant players are typically in the same space and accessible for the duration of the project. When challenges occur, a democratically structured workflow supports optimized solutions, fast turnarounds, and quick implementation.  
• Risk Mitigation: When all parties are equally vested in a project based on IPD philosophy, it’s in everyone’s best interest to quickly solve problems. This process eliminates the usual “blame game” and passing of responsibility, and replaces it with a working environment where everyone is looking for project harmony and ultimate prosperity.
• Transparency: When all team members meet regularly to share their ideas and experiences, or use collaborative software, everyone is up to speed and aware of every aspect of the project. There are no hidden agendas, cost surprises, or delays. 
• Time and Money Savings: Taking an integrated approach can speed up project delivery, and incentivizing everyone to share in the savings motivates everyone to operate at a profit.  
• Teamwork and Collaboration: Because all involved parties act as one entity (due to multi-party contracts or partnership agreements), both project transparency and integrated financial interests increase while fostering mutual support. Contracts also give team members the freedom to share documents without the proprietary or legal risk found in other forms of project delivery.
• Shared Accountability and Shared Risk: IPD spreads responsibility for the project across all team members, whereas traditional models can force contractors and subcontractors to take on a lot of risks. Since IPD involves an overall shared risk, you must have high levels of both owner involvement and trust among all parties.
• Better Business Continuity: There is full alignment with the owner’s goals, which makes successfully completing a project on time and within budget greater than traditional delivery methods.
• Higher Standards: When everyone has skin in the game and potential financial incentives or liability, and a sense of unity with their colleagues, they tend to work to benefit the project, their team members, and themselves.
• Customization: A one-size-fits-all is not part of the equation in IPD. By its nature, IPD creates an environment that provides custom solutions to design and construction challenges. While there is continuous learning that you can apply to subsequent projects, every engagement provides an opportunity to learn and deliver unique solutions.
• Increased Stakeholder Satisfaction: In essence, this is the goal of IPD, in addition to maximizing value and minimizing waste.   

A Big Pro for the Environment: IPD & Green Construction Are a Natural Fit

“IPD and the use of Lean all go together well in Green, and high-performance LEED rated structures, and we need to make more effort to build sustainably,” says Barnes. The U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) tells us that buildings are responsible for much of the world’s energy use — 41 percent on average. The next largest energy consumers don’t even come close: “Buildings are responsible for 73 percent of the electricity consumption in the U.S., and our building construction is responsible for much of the greenhouse gas emissions that affect climate change. Buildings are responsible for 38 percent of all CO2 emissions.”

It makes sense to use collaboration to lower those numbers. Designing and planning to reduce those numbers is logical. “It’s important to thrash out all the potential risk far in advance and stay in tight communication with other stakeholders from start to finish, but especially at the start,” adds Barnes.

Barnes says that any firm can use IPD. “The method can scale to small projects — it isn’t only for mega commercial projects. Everyone wants to save money and waste less. Taking a Lean approach and using an ongoing process of rethinking and improving methodology is important to me as an architect and someone who is interested in sustainability. IPD is a critical process for all green or LEED projects.”

The Cons of IPD

“Right now there is a strong method and increasing industry understanding of Lean in construction, but not in design,” says Cheng. “By lagging, Lean design is at risk to be seen as just another phase to apply robust Lean construction processes and tools. In fact, Lean design needs a different approach and method, and will require its own kind of culture shift. Until we spend some time working through what Lean means for design phases, we are in danger of trying to apply Lean methods developed for construction to the whole design.”

“IPD is sometimes seen as onerous and complex because it demands that owners and project teams negotiate contract terms such as the shared risk/reward pool and terms of fiscal transparency,” writes Cheng in one of her recent post about her IPD research study. “Our research team found that the time and energy spent on negotiations was an investment that paid off in forming the foundation for mutual trust and respect, key elements of successful collaboration.”

• Owner Engagement: “You must have an involved client who will provide strong leadership, with detailed, defined project goals and deep construction process knowledge,” says Zandy. “It’s a different set of owner responsibilities compared to other delivery methods that can lead to resistance.”
• Resistance to Change and Training: As Heinemeier says, “It can be difficult to implement a cultural change.” Industry professionals sell their services based on past projects and can tend to devalue taking on a new practice. The idea that learning and performance improvement is a necessity may appear as a threat instead of an exciting opportunity. “Training requires a significant investment of time/resources. Adopting IPD and Lean tools and principles will require time and energy training clients, designers, builders, and trade partners,’” adds Zandy.
• Rigor Is Required: With a goal of extraordinary results, IPD demands the use of metrics. Design metrics need to be balanced with the others — engineering, costs, budget — to meet stated goals. In fact, the entire team needs to identify metrics at the outset and track them throughout the IPD process, and also monitor associated costs. The project team is responsible for managing how successfully metrics are being met at milestones throughout the various stages of design and construction.
• Difficulty Finding IPD Experts: Despite the surge in interest and positive results of IPD, there currently aren’t many seasoned practitioners. For owners, there aren’t a large pool of experienced practitioners who have completed projects as a firm, individually, or as a multi-disciplinary team member.
• Contract Challenges: “The shared risk and reward (we all sink or swim together), and the idea that one team member can hurt the entire team’s financial outcome is a great incentive or a challenge to those who are new to IPD,” explains Allison. Several new contract models have been developed as legal and insurance entities have learned about IPD. When risk is explicitly assigned, legal bodies and insurers can provide the necessary support. Request for an Integrated Team (RFIT) is an IPD-driven agreement. You can find samples of multi-party, RFIT multi-party agreements, more contracts, and shared risk-healthcare providers and IPD/lean construction here.  
• Financing and Insurance Hurdles: “Integrated project delivery as a delivery method can sometimes have insurance issues if professional advisors are not brought in early,” says Zandy. “To clarify the issues and obtain coverage to protect the IPD project, insurers must understand how the parties work together and how that reduces the risk of common claims. It is important to have insurers sculpt builder’s risk as well as professional and general liability policies to meet the intent of the project.” 
• The Essential (and Most Difficult) Element of IPD Is Trust: “Nurturing a positive environment of mutual respect and trust is critical to team integration,” explains Zandy. “Participating parties must become strong teams to be successful. In my practice, I often refer to Patrick Lencioni’s The Five Dysfunctions of a Team.” The following are the five dysfunctions: 
   

1. The fear of individual vulnerability 
2. Working toward artificial harmony over constructive authentic debate 
3. A lack of commitment and feigning buy-in for group decisions 
4. Sidestepping the duty to call colleagues on disadvantageous actions 
5. Having attitudes that set low standards and focus on personal prestige and ego before the success of the entire team 

“By not falling into these traps, and by understanding trust can be realized through teams fulfilling commitments to each other, projects can experience great success with IPD,” says Zandy.

But you need some patience at the beginning of the process, Zandy explains. “Trust takes time. Implementing IPD won’t automatically make team members trust each other. Training is required.”

Pease believes that co-location (putting everyone in the same room) for projects is essential. He also takes the time to help team members bond. “We use team building exercises, play games, do simulations. We have a big poster on the wall that says, ‘If I can’t say no, my yes means nothing.’ You need to challenge things, and we recognize individuals.”