What is Integrated Project Delivery (IPD)? – Part 1 of 3

Knowledge Gap Closure: The Early Decision Practice That Prevents Most Construction Change Orders

The most valuable knowledge about how to deliver an Integrated Project Delivery project successfully does not come from consultants or academics. It comes from owners who have done it who have sat in the big room, worked through the alignment process, navigated the moments when the collaborative model was tested by schedule pressure or misaligned partners, and can describe with specificity what made the difference between projects that achieved the model’s promise and projects that did not.

In 2013, a group of owners who had completed IPD projects were interviewed about their experience. The group was later expanded to include owners representing a broader array of project sizes and types not just the large healthcare projects that dominated the early IPD landscape, but a fuller range of building types and delivery contexts. Their responses to three questions, what are the keys to success, what problems did you encounter, and what advice would you give to other owners form the most practical guide to IPD available because they are grounded in what actually happened rather than in what the model promises.

What Actually Makes IPD Work

The most consistent finding across all the owners interviewed is that the engaged owner is the single most important success factor. Not the contract structure. Not the software. Not the experience level of the design team. The owner. As one participant stated directly: your behavior has an overt impact on the team. That is why leadership is so important. Another made it even more specific: if the owner does not demonstrate collaborative behavior, trust will be destroyed.

This is a harder requirement than it first appears. An engaged owner in the IPD context means an owner who shows up to the big room, who participates in the alignment process, who models the transparent and collaborative behavior they expect from the team, and who protects that culture when it is challenged. Many owners who enter IPD with good intentions find that their own organizational constraints, procurement policies, legal departments, internal management structures that were not aligned before the project started become the most significant barriers to the model working as designed.

Getting alignment within the owner’s organization before the project starts is not a formality. It is a prerequisite. Management, procurement, and legal must understand what IPD requires and must be prepared to support it when the process is challenged because on large projects, someone will attempt to end-run the collaborative process. When that attempt is not backed by organizational authority, it succeeds and the collaborative culture is damaged in ways that are very difficult to repair.

Scope Clarity and True Alignment

The second key to success is a clear, defined project scope before pre-construction begins. The burn rate in IPD pre-construction can be high, teams of skilled, expensive professionals working in intensive collaboration consume time and money quickly. When that collaboration is directed at a well-defined project with clear business goals, the investment produces returns. When the team is assembled and working but the owner has not yet defined what they actually want, the collaboration produces very little value. As one participant described it: you need to have a plan before you turn on the faucet.

Alignment in IPD is not primarily about agreeing to contract terms, it is about genuinely linking the project goals to the owner’s business goals. The deliverable is not a set of plans and specifications. It is a project that meets the owner’s operational needs, performs within their budget horizon, and delivers the business value they were trying to create when they decided to build. Teams that understand and commit to that definition of success are aligned. Teams that commit to a scope document without understanding the business context behind it are not.

Choosing the Right Partners

The partner selection question is one of the places where IPD most diverges from traditional procurement. In design-bid-build, partners are selected primarily on price and relevant experience. In IPD, those factors matter but the capacity to function in a collaborative environment matters equally and sometimes more. A firm with excellent expertise and a strong track record with the owner may be unable to function in a big room, may resist the transparency that IPD requires, or may price their services based on prior project experiences that they assume will repeat regardless of the collaborative delivery model.

One participant reported that when partners joined who had not fully bought into collaborative delivery, their knowledge of past problems caused them to inflate cost estimates because they would not assume the collaborative model would perform better than their conventional project experience. The cost assumptions carried the distrust of the old paradigm into a model that depends on trust to function.

Focus on the people, not the company. The individual who will be in the room, making commitments, and modeling collaborative behavior every day is more important than the firm’s portfolio.

The Problems That Appear Even on Well-Designed IPD Projects

The owners were direct about the problems they encountered, and the pattern is instructive.

Starting pre-construction without a clear project scope is the most commonly cited problem. It is also one of the most preventable but preventing it requires the owner to complete the internal work of defining their business goals before assembling the team, which can feel slower than simply starting the process.

Choosing the wrong partners is the second most significant problem. Companies that have the expertise and the client relationship but cannot function collaboratively create damage that is difficult to contain once the project is underway. The collaborative culture depends on all participants modeling the behaviors it requires. One participant who is resistant to transparency, who insists on protecting their cost information, or who uses the pressure of schedule to justify reverting to traditional decision-making, sends a signal that the model is not real and other participants adjust their behavior accordingly.

Lack of management capability within the project management team is the third significant problem. IPD asks competent designers and builders to become the executives of a large, complex organization making decisions about budget, schedule, scope, and team composition that require leadership and management skills that are distinct from technical expertise. Those skills are rarely developed before the project begins and rarely developed fast enough by learning on the job.

Here are the signals that an IPD project is building genuine alignment rather than performing it:

• The owner is visibly present in the big room and models the transparent, collaborative behavior they expect from the team.
• Project goals are defined in terms of the owner’s business outcomes, not just scope and specifications.
• Partners were selected for their capacity to function collaboratively, not only for technical expertise and price.
• The management chain above the project has been briefed and is prepared to protect the collaborative process when it is challenged.
• Dashboards make project status visible to everyone on the team simultaneously, not just to those who generate the reports.

The Advice That Matters Most

The one-sentence advice from the owners who have been through the process carries more practical weight than most IPD training programs. Several pieces of it stand out.

Know why you are doing Lean IPD. Do not do it because it is interesting or because others are doing it. The model is hard. It will be challenged. If the owner does not have a clear understanding of why this delivery method serves their business goals better than the alternative, the first significant challenge will be sufficient to abandon the collaborative approach in favor of the familiar one.

Don’t assume your partners understand the contract or the relationship. Spend the time to educate the entire team. The contract terms that make IPD different from conventional delivery shared risk and reward, open-book cost accounting, consensus decision-making in the core group are unfamiliar to most participants. Assumptions about what they mean produce misalignment that compounds over time.

Be willing to trust, be trustworthy, and commit to full transparency. This is the cultural core of IPD stated in its simplest form. It requires all three simultaneously, the willingness to extend trust before it has been fully earned, the behavior that makes you trustworthy in the eyes of others, and the practice of transparency that allows the trust to be verified rather than just assumed.

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The owners who have done it, navigated the challenges, and delivered successful IPD projects are clear: it is hard, it is worth it, and the most important thing you can do is choose to do it with full commitment rather than halfway.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the single most important success factor in an IPD project according to owners?

An engaged owner who models collaborative behavior. If the owner does not demonstrate the transparency and trust the model requires, the team will not sustain those behaviors either and the collaborative culture that IPD depends on will erode.

Why does partner selection matter more in IPD than in conventional delivery?

Because IPD requires participants to function collaboratively, share cost information transparently, and commit to the project’s success rather than their company’s margin. Firms that cannot or will not operate that way cause damage that is very difficult to contain once the project is underway.

What is the most commonly cited problem in IPD pre-construction?

Starting without a clear project scope. IPD pre-construction consumes significant resources quickly. When the team is assembled and working but the owner has not defined what they want, the collaboration produces minimal value despite significant investment.

Why must the owner’s management chain be aligned before the project starts?

Because on large projects someone will attempt to end-run the collaborative process. Without organizational authority above the project committed to protecting the model, those attempts succeed and the collaborative culture is damaged in ways that are difficult to repair.

What does “alignment” mean in an IPD context beyond contract terms?

Genuine alignment means all participants understand and are committed to delivering the owner’s business goals, not just the scope of work. The difference between a team aligned to a set of specifications and a team aligned to what the owner is actually trying to achieve operationally and financially determines how the team responds when scope, cost, and schedule decisions must be made under pressure.