On Sept. 24, DPR Construction hosted a workshop that walked more than 100 attendees through the fundamentals of Lean, building information modeling (BIM) and integrated project delivery (IPD). The three-and-a-half-hour event, held at the University of Texas at Austin, demonstrated the latest tools being implemented on DPR projects across the country and proven methods for delivering better performance and outcomes on projects.

Following are excerpts from the presentations given by Chris Rippingham, Dean Reed and George Hurley:

WHAT IS IPD?

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) created a guide that defines IPD as “a project delivery approach that integrates people, systems, business structures and practices into a process that collaboratively harnesses the talents and insights of all participants to optimize project results, increase value to the owner, reduce waste, and maximize efficiency through all phases of design, fabrication and construction.”

HOW DOES IPD DIFFER FROM OTHER DELIVERY APPROACHES?

In IPD, you are leveraging the benefit, the value, of having as many builders on the team as you can, as early as you can, to provide a higher level of certainty around your job quality, schedule and cost. A quick comparison…with design, bid, build, which we’re all familiar with, there is a lack of cost certainty. The project is designed in a silo, bid out and then an estimate is put together. The team is engaged, the building is built, and then you find out at the end of the job what it really cost. The negotiated job is a little better, but you don’t always have the opportunity to involve the entire building team, and the entire building team doesn’t always have direct access to the design team and design consultants. So, a lot of information is lost in the process. In an integrated team, the designers and builders work together from the start to provide a complete design. Cost also informs design so that at no time can a design team “over design” something that ends up costing more than what’s expected by the owner.

WHAT IS TARGET VALUE DESIGN?

In target value design, early on, a project is validated; you might be familiar with feasibility studies. It’s an opportunity for an owner to decide what he or she wants to build, what it’s going to look like, and then just how much he or she can afford to spend—an allowable cost. That will eventually evolve into an expected cost. If you’ve read any of the IPD agreements, and especially the integrated form of agreement (IFOA), you’ll see terminology: EMP. We are all used to GMP in the negotiated world—a guaranteed maximum price. We’re all used to AIA language relating to how a GMP holds up and the risks of a GMP. In an IPD agreement, you’ll read all about an EMP, the expected maximum price that you, as a team, have agreed on. The agreement can either be executed before you start design, or it can be executed at some mid-point in design. Or you can determine EMP right before you go to construction. Ideally, you don’t touch dirt with a backhoe unless you have an EMP. And that is the expected maximum price that an owner is willing to pay for that project.

WHAT IS BIM’S ROLE IN IPD?

BIM is the tool that enables us, in the integrated world, to make it happen. With the integrated delivery, you can see that your building is on track—you’re using the BIM tools to build, virtually. The team is incentivized to hold those costs—to keep those costs aligned. The more that you do with a job that is as transparent as it can be, the easier it is to really track costs. Model-based estimating is a piece of the BIM world that still needs work. We can track quantities in BIM, but we can’t yet automate the estimating practice. There’s still a piece of the estimating practice where somebody has to manually stand over an estimate and add or tag components to it.

WHAT IS THE OPTIMUM TIMING FOR IPD?

We’ve been engaged at so many different phases now that I don’t know if there is an optimum time. We believe that it’s late to choose an integrated approach at the end of schematic design (SD). So if you wait until you’re 100 percent SD, you’re probably late. And so my recommendation for the optimum time would be sometime in that SD phase. There are some owners that say, “The day I pick my design team, I’m going to pick my contractor.” And he may as well pick his subs, because we’re all going to start on the same day. But it does vary.