Lean Tools During Design & Preconstruction – IPD or Not

Respect for People in Lean Construction: What It Actually Looks Like in Practice

The most important thing to establish at the outset of any conversation about Lean tools during design is this: you do not need an IPD contract to use them successfully. The tools work. The contract structure is not what makes them work. What makes them work is the right integrated environment and creating that environment is within reach on virtually any project, regardless of how the contract was structured.

This matters because the Lean construction community sometimes presents IPD as the prerequisite for genuine Lean design practice, which leads practitioners in conventional delivery environments to conclude that the tools are not available to them. They are. The team and the tools are the key. The contract is the frame, not the substance.

What the Right Integrated Environment Actually Requires

The foundation of a successful Lean design environment is an owner who is deeply engaged, heavily invested, and genuinely passionate about the project’s mission. This owner does not need experience with Lean tools. They need to be open, trusting, and willing to invest in the team and the process. One owner who had been through a full co-located, big room design process put it simply: the investment in bringing the team together early, in shared space, with the time to actually work together is the best money spent on the project.

Beyond the owner, the team must function as a team not as a collection of contracted parties exchanging information through formal channels. Understanding behaviors is the mechanism that makes this happen. When team members develop self-awareness about their natural tendencies, build understanding of each other’s working styles, and have practical methods for navigating conflict quickly, they become a trusting and high-performing group. That trust is what makes the tools work. Without it, the tools produce meetings rather than decisions, and documents rather than commitments.

Tool One: Choosing by Advantages

Choosing by Advantages is one of the most effective design decision-making tools available, and it works equally well in conventional delivery environments as in IPD. Two examples illustrate both the range of applications and the quality of outcomes it produces.

A hospital in North Texas had used cast-in-place concrete for every major campus project in its history. When the latest project came up, the team applied set-based design to analyze multiple structural systems. They used CBA to make the final selection, evaluating the advantages of each option against the others and against cost separately. The outcome surprised them: a steel structure’s advantages made the case for a change in direction that the hospital’s historical preference would never have produced through conventional decision-making. The decision was transparent, documented, and defensible.

On a design-build private K-12 student union project, the owner entrusted the design architect and general contractor to select the architect of record and chose whatever process they felt was appropriate. The team used CBA. The selected firm was wholly accepted by the owner not because the owner was simply accommodating, but because the process produced a decision that was visibly grounded in the factors that mattered most to the project. CBA makes decisions defensible not by making them uncontestable but by making the reasoning behind them clear and shared.

Tool Two: Set-Based Design and Target Value Design

The same student union project provided two separate examples of set-based design in practice, in very different circumstances. In the first, school officers were growing the program expanding square footage and scope while the executive committee held firm on a conceptual budget and would not authorize increases. The team chose to enter set-based design immediately. They identified the program elements that were non-negotiable, created several floor plan versions that each accommodated those elements while distributing the flexible elements differently, and brought those options to the owner. The owner selected their preferred layout. The team designed to budget. The set-based approach preserved the owner’s ability to make the decision they cared about while protecting the budget constraint they had imposed.

In the second, a wood ceiling was selected for the main dining area at the concept level. Communication gaps produced a design interpretation that did not match the architect’s intent stained beadboard rather than the radiused, stained, dimensional ceiling that was envisioned. When the budget and design misalignment was identified, the team established a maximum target cost for the ceiling and brought in a drywall trade partner to assist with budgeting. From there, they generated several ceiling concepts another round of set-based design and selected a pre-manufactured wood-looking ceiling product that achieved both the design intent and the target cost. The willingness to run the process again, rather than accepting the constraint as a failure, is what produced the solution.

Tool Three: Design 3P

Design 3P Production, Preparation, Process is the practice of mocking up entire rooms with simple materials so that actual users can experience the space rather than reading plan drawings and imagining it. On a CM-at-Risk urgent care clinic project, several key areas were mocked up with members of the user groups. The process produced decisions that two-dimensional design review meetings could never have generated.

The results were measurable. The building has never needed physical expansion, while nearly identical facilities for the same client that did not go through the 3P process have been expanded. Unnecessary storage areas were identified and eliminated, setting a new client standard that carried forward to other projects. And patient satisfaction at this facility significantly exceeded satisfaction at comparable facilities with similar budgets and service offerings. These outcomes came from allowing the customers of the space the actual users to experience what they were helping design, rather than only seeing it as an abstraction on paper.

Tool Four: Pull Planning During Design

Pull planning is standard practice on the construction side of most Lean projects. It is significantly underused during design where the same principles apply and the same benefits are available. Two contrasting experiences illustrate the difference between genuine and half-hearted adoption. On a 120,000-square-foot CM-at-Risk renovation, the mechanical engineering firm had representatives in the pull planning sessions but did not believe in the method and only partially committed to their activities. The design process did not follow the plan. The regular fire drill ensued. The presence of the tool without the commitment to it produced the same outcome as the absence of the tool.

On a different project, the general contractor was brought on with only a basic floor plan selected and an owner request to break ground within five months. Pull planning was used to develop the plan for achieving that aggressive schedule. When decisions lagged or delays occurred as they always do the team used the pull planning framework to re-plan in real time, adjust commitments, and re-establish the path to the schedule objective. The flexibility that the pull plan provided was not despite the discipline of commitment-based planning. It was because of it. A team that knows what it committed to and what has slipped can re-plan quickly. A team without a committed plan can only react.

Here are the conditions that allow Lean design tools to work in non-IPD environments:

• An owner who is present, engaged, and genuinely willing to invest in early team integration
• A team that has invested time in understanding each other’s working styles and has methods for navigating conflict
• A shared working environment physical or virtual that allows direct communication rather than formal channel communication
• Full commitment to the tools by all parties whose scope is included in the process
• Leadership that treats the outcomes of CBA, set-based design, and pull planning as genuine decisions rather than inputs to a decision someone else will make

Connecting to the Mission

The distinction between what makes Lean tools work and what does not is exactly the distinction between system thinking and tool thinking. Lean tools are effective when the relational, behavioral, and environmental conditions that make them work are in place. They are ineffective or worse, produce the appearance of effectiveness without the substance when those conditions are absent and the tools are applied as process theater.

Every example in this blog involves a team that chose to build the conditions rather than waiting for the contract to create them. That choice is available in every delivery environment. The contract is the frame. The team is the substance. If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your field teams stabilize, schedule, and flow. You do not need an IPD contract. You need a committed team, an engaged owner, and the willingness to use the tools as they were designed to be used.

On we go.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the right integrated environment for using Lean design tools without an IPD contract?

An engaged owner who is open and trusting, a team that has invested in understanding each other’s working styles, a shared working environment that enables direct communication, and full commitment to the tools by all parties whose scope is involved.

Why does Choosing by Advantages produce decisions that are widely accepted by owners?

Because the process makes the reasoning behind the decision transparent and documented. The owner and all participants can see what advantages were evaluated, how they were weighted, and how cost was considered separately. The decision is defensible on its merits rather than attributable to any individual’s preference or authority.

What is Design 3P and what makes it more effective than plan review meetings?

3P mocks up rooms with simple materials so users can experience the space rather than imagining it from drawings. The physical experience surfaces decisions about flow, function, and size that abstract review processes cannot generate, producing outcomes that are measurably better than those from conventional user meetings.

Why does half-hearted adoption of pull planning during design produce poor results?

Because pull planning works through the commitment mechanism each party’s activities are on the board and their reliability is tracked. When a firm treats the commitments as aspirational rather than genuine, the reliability of the connected commitments degrades and the plan loses its coordinating function.

Can Target Value Design be applied outside of IPD?

Yes. The discipline of establishing a target cost and designing to it rather than designing and then checking against cost can be applied in any delivery environment where the team is committed to the approach. The student union ceiling example shows this working within a CM-at-Risk project with a trade partner engaged to assist with budgeting.