Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) for Maximizing Design and Construction Considerations Regarding Sustainability

The paper discusses a proposal for an integrating partnership for decision-making at pre-construction stages of major construction projects. IPD and BIM form essential tools and strategies in this decision environment. IPD linked to the “Big Room” concept will be discussed. The paper will focus on some of the challenges that are presented and ways that might assist in creating a safer, greener, more sustainable environment. The environment proposed is one that fully utilizes the strengths of intelligent collaborative computer agents that interact with the multi-discipline pre-construction team to interrogate and refine the design solution before construction commences. All contributors are collaboratively drawn into the design and pre-construction process. Time is saved because a concurrent problem-solving approach is adopted rather than a sequential problem-solving approach that has typified pre-construction activities in the past. In particular, the system proposed will assist the design process to deliver safely-built sustainable buildings. The presentation will also focus on the new “Living Building Challenge 2.0” strategy and look at some of the challenges that are presented and ways that might assist creating a safer, greener, more sustainable environment. The author's investigation measured the views of practitioners in the main building professions; architecture, engineering and construction management before proposing the collaborative system that is called for. The conclusion of the work is a conceptual model of the system proposed, a definition of the contractors’ construction management computer agents and a specification based on scenarios of how they would interact with design agents.