i stole this quote from wurden in another thread, but i thought the idea was interesting and worth further discussion in its own right. i'm very intrigued by the ipd model, but have serious reservations that the owner/architect/contractor relationship can ever be a pure partnership. what i've found interesting though is that i have seen this type of partnership work between owner, architect, and the trades.

for example, on one project, we were having serious mechanical problems - duct layout problems, misplaced vavs, access issues, etc. the owner, architect, and trades were able to sit down and find resolution to these issues. the reason why it worked so well is that the mechanical sub had had so much field experience that they in many ways were more knowledgeable about the field problems we were having than the mechanical engineer. the obvious value of ipd is this shared experience or knowledge put towards a common goal. it broke down though as the mechanical engineer felt that his toes were being stepped on, and the gc wanted to nickel and dime the changes. which to me points to the two largest problems facing ipd, control and compensation. hard to imagine a scenario where the o/a/c, if constituted as separate corporate bodies, could overcome these two major issues.

i'm really surprised that this thread has come up twice now without any comments. in my opinion integrated project delivery along with bim are probably the two biggest issues facing the profession. ipd, if it moves in the wrong direction, could be the last straw in giving the design and implementation of buildings over to the contractor. architects stand to lose the most here, and no one in the profession seems to really care?!

This is the first I've ever heard of it...

Huh. Apparently almost all of the projects I've ever worked on were just unofficial IPD projects.

bossman, your previous office was a design-build office, no? it seems the closer to the world of design-build you are, the closer your experience would have been to something similar to the ipd model. the more architects move towards design-build i think the better chance they have of retaining some form of control, both in terms of the design and finances, but i'm not sure if this is really possible on large scale projects. in my quasi-ipd experiences on large projects, the owner and contractor seemed to partner much more so than the architect and the owner. it's like the owner gets what they need out of the architect and the architect gets cast aside in order to build. now, i don't think that's what ipd is really about in its ideal form, but from practical experience that's what i've seen happen. the whole idea of o/a/c partnership seems a little contrived. unfortunately, depending upon how widespread this model becomes (and i think it will become more common, if not entirely formalized), i believe architects need to find strategies to better work within this system.

While it may seem that way to some, in reality there are a lot of people in the profession devoting a lot of time to this emerging process.

AIA, in particular, has made educating its members about IPD a top priority. IPD has been one of AIA's strategic priorities for some years now - AIA publishes articles and whitepapers on this topic on a regular basis - including one of the links above. The AIA's Knowledge Communities are producing a "Time for Change" conference in Chicago in the fall in which IPD will be prominently featured.

However, in the best 'you can lead a horse to water...' tradition, if architects don't want to pay attention until it's too late, there's not much anybody can do.

IMO, the evolution to IPD will tend to follow the same path as sustainable design. As more clients start expressing interest in IPD more architects will get on board. By then, the train already may have left the station and the profession will find itself one more rung down the ladder.

true, although we did work in more "traditional" capacities of an architecture firm, which is where more often than not the process was similar to this IPD method. as long as your client is a champion of architecture, and the contractor is as well (which was usually the case) than i would say you don't have anything to worry about. design-build itself presents a whole other series of problems i won't go into. if your in residential, eventually the owner and builder form an alliance and switch everything around during the CA phase anyway, once the owner figures out that the contractor will answer his questions just as easily as you will without having to pay any extra fees.

i would say that if the architect is proactive about bringing in the contractor early on it can be a great advantage, but if an owner + contractor approach you wanting to work in this method than all they really want from you is a stamped set of documents which is where you are right. i did do some "design-build" work for an architect in michigan before grad school in this capacity and the work was pretty dismal. i will add that personally i'm not a fan of the "old" method of producing architecture, like making drawings and then sending them out for bids which imho places too much responsibility on the architect for estimating costs (i doubt you would like that statement). i think that is a really bad idea, especially with prices on materials the way they are. i would always want a CM to come on board as a part of the team early on, IPD or no IPD. just seems like the best way to control costs, and allows the architect to act as a kind of "shadow" contractor throughout most of the process.