Imagine you have the conceptual idea of a perfect facility for your business. You sit down with an architect per the recommendation of a colleague, and the renderings are incredible. You can visualize the impact this space will have on your operation, and you gain a sense of excitement. That is – until the construction proposal is released from the general contractor. They want how much? Did they accidentally add a 0 onto the cost for those finishes?! This situation, while not the norm, arises entirely too often. Thus, Integrated Project Delivery is born.
Integrated Project Delivery, or IPD, is all the different functions of the construction process coming together early in the project lifecycle to make decisions together, involving all expert insights at the beginning. In the case of the shocking cost revelation above, if the project was executed through IPD, the design professionals creating the rendering would understand material cost implications before they need to be redesigned because of price.