What do you find to be the most critical issue facing the construction
industry and why?
I feel that the most critical issue facing the construction industry today is the fragmentation and
animosity between the different major parties (owner, architect, contractor, and subcontractors),
and how this manifests itself within individual projects and teams. This intra-team division leads
to poor communication, a culture of blame and distrust, and ultimately, inefficiency. In light of
increasing owner demands, rising material and labor costs, and general economic uncertainty, we
cannot afford to be wasting precious time and money on this antiquated mistrust. The issue of
inefficiency is clearly and unsettlingly demonstrated by Figure 1, which shows that construction
is the only non-agrarian industry in the United States to experience a decrease in productivity
from 1964 to 2003. While this could be a consequence of a wide variety of factors, it is easy to
imagine a large portion of the issue is due to the lack of teamwork and collaboration among
project participants.
Figure 1. Teicholz, Paul. “Labor Productivity Declines in the Construction Industry”.
AECBytes. 24 Feb. 2014. <http://www.aecbytes.com/viewpoint/2004/issue_4.html>
Rachel M. Sommer
1
There are many potential solutions to this efficiency problem which have been growing in
popularity over the past few years. However, I feel that the concept which has the greatest
opportunity to transform the way we work and interact on an industry-wide basis is Integrated
Project Delivery (IPD) and its component pieces of collaboration, Lean delivery, and shared
Building Information Modeling (BIM). It is overly optimistic to imagine that the entire industry
will switch to an IPD delivery model, and that this will eradicate our deeply ingrained bad habits
overnight. But I believe that it is realistic to imagine efficiency improving on a project and
industry-wide basis by incorporating collaborative ideals and increasing team-based thinking.
Instead of merely describing the negative impacts that a lack of teamwork can have, I would like
to outline what I see as the major inefficiencies of the construction industry as they stem from
traditional negative project relationships, and how these have the potential to be transformed by
the principles of IPD (not necessarily a “pure” IPD delivery method).
The first major inefficiency that arises from traditional building relationships is a lack of
constructability in design. By thoroughly separating design from construction we have created an
unsettling lack of awareness from each side about the other’s discipline. In a real world sense
this leads to designs which are not constructible and builders who try to “value engineer” out
every aesthetic element they see. This clearly leads to frustration from each side and a significant
loss of time redesigning building elements for constructability. By creating a team environment
where all parties consider the needs of the project above their own, IPD seeks to emphasize good
design and constructability as elements which both need to be emphasized concurrently to add
value to the owner. These two concerns are no longer seen as mutually exclusive, and the
consequence of this is immense savings of time and patience for both architect and engineer.
A related issue is that of general communication between team members. The disdain previously
mentioned creates an animosity between architects and builders which carries over in
surprisingly tangible ways to the building project. Perhaps the most critical manifestation of this
is in team decision making, which is notoriously poor or lopsided in traditional project delivery.
When the designer and builder cannot appropriately communicate their wants and needs to one
another, it becomes impossible to come together and find a solution which works for both
parties. As such, decision-making power is typically vested in a single party based on the
decision timing and impact, and consequently often only addresses that party’s view of the issue.
IPD, however, seeks to create one cohesive team which makes decisions as an integrated unit.
This leads to proactive decision-making and better problem-solving, which provides much more
responsive design that it is optimized from multiple viewpoints. Before this can happen however,
the team must come together far earlier than normal, and fully embrace IPD’s ideal of
collaboration through willingness to communicate positively and openly. A specific aspect of
IPD delivery that provides cost and schedule gains through proactive communication and
planning is Lean delivery. Using Lean principles to guide scheduling efforts requires crossdisciplinary communication and decisions which streamline the building process.
Rachel M. Sommer
2
Another communication based issue that IPD can help solve is improper building, leading to
rework and operations/maintenance issues down the line. Having one entity design something
and another create it clearly only works if these parties are able to communicate clearly and in a
detailed manner. With the current disdain between parties and reticence to communicate on even
a basic level, it is far less likely that unclear areas of design will be confirmed before installation.
This means that the builder will simply do what they think seems reasonable, instead of trying to
enact the design vision of the architect. In traditional delivery this manifests itself in long
punchlists, loss of aesthetic design intent, and improper installation, which causes operations and
maintenance issues for the owner. Long-term operations issues are particularly troubling when
one considers that the lifespan of a building is many times greater than the time span that the
builder interacts with it. By engaging in inter-disciplinary design and early integrated
communication, IPD principles can mitigate this clarity issue and the subsequent rework and
maintenance costs. BIM is another tool of IPD that can significantly increase the communication
of design intent across disciplines, especially when using a fully shared and integrated model.
To conclude, there is much we can and should do to address the efficiency issues of traditional
project delivery as they stem from lack of communication, collaboration, and teamwork across
parties. Traditional project delivery models have created a culture of distrust and self-seeking
actions by architects and builders, which leads to undesirable cost and schedule impacts.
Increased collaboration, particularly through the tenets of IPD, has the potential to address these
negative relationships and the specific undesirable consequences they cause.
Rachel M. Sommer
3