More and more, teamwork,
trust and collaboration are seen as key to successful project delivery. Yet,
few projects seek to maximize the meanings behind those words by making them
central to how the project team is structured and functions.
One approach that does
so—integrated project delivery—binds major stakeholders through a mutual
contract such that individual stakeholder success is tied to overall project
success, with risk and reward both capped and shared.
While IPD is rare—in part
because of the greater up-front effort required—the results are typically powerful,
with better cost and schedule performances and a smoother delivery process.
To help others learn how IPD
might help their projects, we recently checked in with the stakeholder team
behind the second true IPD project with which Skanska is involved, an intensive
care unit renovation at The George Washington University Hospital in
Washington, D.C.
Here’s some of what this team
recently had to share about this project, when on-site work was just getting
underway.
1. All in: Seven organizations signed
the IPD agreement: Universal Health Services (owner); Skanska (construction
manager); WJ Architects (architect of record); In.Design (interior designer);
Southland Industries (mechanical design-builder); M.C. Dean (electrical design-builder);
and Clark’s Lumber and Millwork (millwork trade partner). With this
arrangement, there are no separate contracts between the owner and the
architect, construction managers and key trade contractors, and so on—every key
firm is part of one contract to align all interests with that of the project.
2. Project finances in a new
light: Owner
Universal Health Services is accepting all risk for project cost and the
overhead of the signatory partners, said Christian Pikel, UHS regional project
manager. However, each partner’s profit is put at risk through a shared pool.
Any savings from the target budget will be shared among participants, up to the
profit pool cap.
3. Consensus-based
objectives:
Early in the project, team members and end users came together to define the
project’s “conditions of satisfaction”—common team objectives. They crafted 10
of these statements, which include improving doctor, nurse and staff work flows
within the sixth floor ICU; eliminating unanticipated noise from impacting
adjacent spaces (the project is directly above an active intensive care unit);
building a work environment in which all team participants demonstrate
leadership roles and process improvement; and incorporate surge capacity within
the project budget.
The team has developed a
spreadsheet containing all conditions, and at every meeting they go down the
list and rate their recent performance for each, said Andy Rhodes, Southland
design engineer/project manager.
4. A3 library: IPD’s team-based nature
makes it ideal for incorporating the principles and tools of lean construction,
which focuses on eliminating waste and continual improvement. Of this project’s
lean aspects, A3s are being used not just a single-page way to identify, analyze
and propose solutions for problems, but as a means of sharing that thinking
across projects.
“We were able to pull an A3
on a bariatric issue from another project,” said Aimee Fogarty, Skanska project
manager. “By re-examining that document, we didn’t have to start from scratch.”
5. Better-informed design: This project’s designers are
finding that IPD enables them to get the input they need to produce a more
realistic design the first time.
“It helps clarify
expectations much sooner, instead of the typical process of doing value
engineering later on in traditional models,” said Jenna Santamaria, In.Design
senior designer. “I really get excited and enjoy when we have some healthy
tension going on in the Big Room: we get to start horse trading back and forth
and asking ourselves, ‘What can we do to make this work?’”
6. Trust in the Big Room: IPD requires more up-front
participation from all parties, including significant time spent in regular
in-person Big Room meetings in which all team participants work together on
project issues. Such meetings require a different mindset. For example,
everyone has equal status and say in all matters. To keep everyone focused,
multitasking and sidebar conversations aren’t allowed. And trust is of
paramount importance.
“Each expert involved in the
project must trust each other’s judgment because the success of the team
determines the overall success of the project,” said Jennifer Macks, Skanska
vice president. “Also, to make the most of the collaborative communication and
problem-solving scenario, everyone must be comfortable with one another and
share their expertise.”
Source: BDC
Network
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