Collaborative Building-A Common Sense Approach

I just became acquainted with a very technical sounding term- Integrated Project Delivery (IPD). IPD is a construction industry term that means that the design and construction teams collaborate cooperatively to create a project to deliver to the client. This is something that we’ve been doing for years. IPD is a reaction to a loss in productivity in the construction economy related to wasted money and time due to current somewhat adversarial design and building procedures. It seems, as we’ve known all along, that Architects and contractors have finally figured out that working together, rather than against each other, delivers a better project to the client. The typical project scenario:Design-Bid-Build-Complain (DBBC) hasn’t produced happy clients, and has produced massive cost over-runs, litigation, and ill-will for projects in both the public and private sectors of the economy. This comes as no surprise-imagine what automobiles would be like if one company designed them, then another company bid out the designs, and a third company built the cars!! I think we can all agree that would be disastrous! Well, that’s what stands for typical in construction. IPD is a way for construction to move away from those roots, and into the world that all other producers of goods live in-customer-centric and delivery based. We’ve been operating IPD and didn’t even know it for over 20 years! There we are- at the cutting edge of our industry-just by using Common Sense (CS)!!