Editorial: Lean and Integrated Project Delivery
Authors: Smith Ryan E. , Mossman Alan , Emmitt Stephen 
Published: October 2024

The construction industry is unsafe, inefficient, fraught with errors and litigation. Traditional transactional contracts and practices rigidly delineate responsibilities with much elaboration on the consequences of failure. This context reinforces risk-abating behavior, causing project teams to not engage in collaborative processes and presenting an adversarial construction culture, much to the disadvantage of all stakeholders. Owners are losing money on projects, architects and engineers are not seeing the quality of design increase, and constuctors are bearing a great deal of financial burden and risk in the process. Construction may be best described as a “wicked problem” fragmented by the complexity of the subject, social interactions and latent technology (Conklin 2005). The results of this fragmentation have been quantified in terms of waste and poor productivity. In 2007 Paul Teicholz of the Center for Integrated Facility Engineering (CIFE), Stanford University, calculated the productivity within the U.S. field construction industry relative to all non-farm industries from 1964 through 2004 (Eastman et al 2008, 8-10). During this 40-year period US productivity outside of construction has doubled while labor productivity within the construction industry is estimated to be 10% less than what it was in 1964. Labor historically represents 40-60% of construction’s estimated costs. Owners are therefore actually paying 5% more in 2004 than they would have paid for the same building in 1964. Likewise, Horman and Kenley (2005) report that across a variety of circumstances and contexts, 49.6% of construction operative time is devoted to wasteful activities. Granted buildings are much more complex from a systems and performance perspective today than they ever have been, yet other industries harnessing integrated processes have increased productivity and increased customer value (Kieran & Timberlake 2003). Conceptually, during the lifecycle of a construction project, a project team is responsible for transforming labor and material into a building. In other words, design and construction can be viewed as a series of activities, where some add value and others do not. There are numerous time-consuming, non-value-adding actives in the design process, such as correction of errors and rework, the physical handling and organization of documents, and transportation, inspection, and movement during the construction process (Eastman, et al 2008, 330-1). The key to overcoming this inefficiency in the industry is to identify waste in construction and determine a method for removing waste and replacing it with value adding possibilities. Various strategies and tactics have been developed in order to accomplish such. As an answer to the waste, litigation and lack of integration in the industry, in 2000 Ballard proposed a high level map of the end-to-end design, construction, facility management and demolition cycle — the Lean Project Delivery System (Ballard 2000a). For the last four years The American Institute of Architects has been championing Integrated Project Delivery developing methodologies and contracts to support integrated philosophies (Cohen 2010). In the UK in 2002 the Strategic Forum for Construction published ‘Accelerating Change’, which also called for integrated project teams, integrated supply chains and integrated work flows (Egan 2002). In 2008, the Construction Users Round Table (CURT) published ‘Key Agent’s of Change’ redefining lean construction as lean project delivery to emphasize that the principles of lean are about the entirety of the building industry, including owner, design and construction teams (Sowards 2008). A key tenet in the exploration of integrated and lean processes is the exploitation of building information modeling, an information rich solids 3D modeling concept that encourages building virtually before building physically. The ultimate implementation of BIM would be an open-source platform where building projects are digitally conceived, programmed, designed, visualized, subjected to various simulations, reviewed for code compliance and constructed directly from the digital model which then would serve the owner in operating the facility. The BIM model (or models) would be a series of interconnected data structures and be directly accessed by all project participants. The realization of this goal would change how projects are created at every stage, yielding new models of design and construction practice. While theoretically feasible, this ideal faces many serious obstacles in reality. Every year researchers and software vendors are making advances in BIM technology (Smith 2010, 72–73). In a 2010 issue of AEC Bytes, Randy Deutsch reminded his readers of GSA’s Charles Hardy’s statement “BIM is about 10% technology and 90% sociology”. Deutsch went on to assert “ninety percent of what has been written, analyzed and studied about BIM so far is the technology. While the 10% technology works itself out,” he continued, “we would as an industry do well to turn our attention toward the 90% that we share, the sociology of Integrated Design.” Therefore, lean construction and integrated design and construction are nothing short of a paradigm shift that has systemic implications that are social, cultural, legal, environmental, and economic that gives rise to process questions such as: -How can the design and the build team integrate effectively to deliver more value for the client? -How can integrative digital technology support designers and constructors working together? -What additional collaborative skills do project stakeholder participants need in order to integrate effectively? -What processes and commercial arrangements such as compensation, contractual obligations and otherwise help project teams work together to create the value that clients, owners and users want? -What barriers must be overcome to create the desired value? The articles in this special issue of the Lean Construction Journal work to ask timely questions and begin to find answers to how design teams and the build teams can integrate effectively in order to deliver more value for owners. This topic is explored through the lens of two tools of engagement: Lean Project Delivery and Integrated Project Delivery. The editors sincerely hope that this will spawn continued discussion on the relationship between these delivery systems, in order to foster additional operational methods and aid in realizing a more socially innovative, productive, context in which buildings are realized. The four papers in this special issue approach the subject from a variety of viewpoints. -Singleton & Hamzeh take an owners stance to examine the relevance of IPD for construction procurement for the US Navy; -Cho & Ballard examine the contribution Last Planner makes Integrated Project Delivery; -Ghassemi & Becerik-Gerber look at the barriers to Integrated Project Delivery and what can help AEC professionals surmount them -Kim & Dossick ask What makes the delivery of a project integrated? In the case of the Children’s Hospital, Bellevue, WA project