Stutter Medical Centre Castro Valley: Case Study of an IPD Project

SMCCV Project – state of the art 130 bed hospital in Castro Valley, CA; a $320 million project

Integrated Project Delivery System – integrates people, systems, business structures and practices into a

process that collaboratively harness the talents and insights of all participants to reduce waste and

optimize efficiency through all phases of design, fabrication and construction

- Tight collaboration between owners, A/Es, and builders from early design till project handover

Reasons to choose IPD for this project as project had many challenges that could not be met by using

traditional DBB process

- Many facilities required mandated seismic improvements – IPD good way to reduce time delays

and budget overruns typically associated with large projects

- Hard deadline for both design and construction

- Accelerated schedule - 30% more than conventional

IPD Team consisting of people from all trades along with the owner and A/E was formed

- No GMP set for project from start, instead profit sharing model adopted to finish the project on

time and under budget; this profit sharing contract will be signed before the construction starts

- Firms devoted full time employees to the project

- State Regulatory Agency takes 16-24 months to review project after submission and provide

approval

o Will lead to delays

o So, team used phased review approach

Complicated shape of design and added schedule and budget constraints led to adoption of BIM model

- BIM model was created first and paper documents were done at later stages when required

- BIM model used for quantity takeoff, estimation and fabrication as well

- Real time access to project information by using Bentley’s ProjectWise information management

and documentation control

o Allowed smooth flow of information without delay

o Allowed for direct inputs from fabricators to increase efficiency

- Continuous design reviews done to allow cross functional teams to collaborate and contribute

their knowledge for better results

- Solibri Model Checker used to check compliance with accessibility and ADA codes

- Value Stream Mapping – visual method of documenting workflow to identify value added and

nonvalue added components – use data to maximize value, eliminate waste and save time by

streamlining workflows

- Team meeting are important for IPD approach - regular meeting held bi-weekly – people attend

the meeting physically or connected remotely (GoToMeeting) if unable to be physically present

o Model reviewed together – questions and doubts that other discipline people have are

cleared by experts from particular discipline in question

o Problems can be detected and resolved almost immediately – example is discussed

where minor structural changes in the model resulted in clashes with other

components, structural team was asked to join the meeting remotely and matter was

resolved in no time.

Advantages of IPD observed on the project

- Structural design time reduced from 15 months to 8 months

- Collaboration from different trades resulted in better design quality

- IPD requires people to meet on regular basis which counts for billable hours towards design

cost, but use of IPD has proved to be overall less costly than conventional approach – time spent

in meetings reduced time that would have been spent on redesigning and remodeling

- Incorporating IPD approach for a project requires strong willingness from the owner, and also

from various trades involved in the project to collaborate effectively for success of the project

o IPD promotes effective communication among various members of team

The VDC Scorecard: Evaluation of AEC Projects and Industry Trends

Most studies regarding planning, adoption, technological use and performance of VDC are based on

case-studies approach. Case Study approach has limitations as it does not provide enough insights and is

not strong as a toll that can be used for making decisions regarding adoption and implementation of

VDC on a project. This paper tries to change that scenario as it provides a statistical approach to it.

Statistically established insights are more powerful toll in aiding decision making easy.

- VDC Scorecard measures project performance in 4 major areas: Planning, Adoption, Technology

and Performance

- Areas are further broken into 10 Divisions, and under each Division there are 56 detailed

practice measurements in total

- VDC Scorecard correlates VDC performance factors with case study based observations and

hypotheses

- 51 correlation pairs observed – 6 VDC Scorecard Area-based correlations, and 45 VDC Scorecard

Division-based correlations – Figure shows the various Areas, Divisions and Measures and

percentage weightage of each in the overall VDC Scorecard

- Weighted Average Percentage of each VDC Area is taken to get the overall score

- Interviews for data collection from 108 unique projects done; over 150 VDC Scorecards made

o Data collected from AEC projects from 13 countries in North America, Europe and Asia

and 15 states across USA

o Project delivery method also range from DBB to IPD and IFoA (Integrated Form of

Agreement) – evaluated from pre-design phase to end of construction and O&M

- VDC Scorecard Results – Average Overall score = 50% ; Planning Average – 50% ; Adoption

Average – 56% ;Technology Average – 48% ; Performance Average – 47%

o Conventional Practices – below 25% - 2 projects

o Typical Practices – 25% to 50% - 49 projects

o Advanced Practices – 50% to 75% - 52 projects

o Best Practices – 75% to 90% - 5 projects

o Innovative Practices - >90% - 0 projects

Scores show that VDC is commonly used, but yet not adopted as a prominent

tool in AEC industry - Industrial and Healthcare industry scored more than other

industries – stringent norms in these industries make VDC a good choice

Figure: VDC Areas, Divisions and Measures and percentage weightage of each in the overall VDC

Scorecard

Results of Correlation Analysis:-

- Planning Area: Shared belief of VDC among stakeholders is good for implementation of VDC.

Formalized documentation of VDC objectives is first step of VDC collaboration and has

significant effect on the integrated performance of project teams; establishing quantitative

objectives contributes significantly to project’s success. General VDC guidelines should be

developed which can also be adopted by future projects

- Adoption Area: Early engagement of stakeholders and their role in decision making is important

for success of VDC. Frequent meeting should be scheduled to track efficiency and to resolve

issues; promote innovative communication and facilitation methods like Integrated Concurrent

Engineering (ICE) sessions. Incentives should be given to all stakeholders as a motivation to work

together for the overall benefit of project

- Technology Area: Different levels of LOD should be established for different stages of the project

– the amount of detail that is put in LOD should also be decided for every stage in such a way

that enough detail is available for each stakeholder to do their work in that stage. High

interoperability among the softwares used on a project should be encouraged to avoid time lost

in making information from one software to be useful in other software – good interoperability

means data from one software can be imported to another and used readily.

- Performance Area: set up targets for each performance category at the planning stage. Targets

can be broken down to milestones; constant track should be kept on them and performance

report created, readjustments can be done if required. Review of performance and outcomes

should be done on a regular basis – weekly or more often

Case Study 1- Healthcare Project in California

- IPD method used for construction

- High collaboration between owner, end user, designers and general contractor

- VDC consultant kept from pre-design phase till end of construction

- Special contractors involved in the design phase of project to provide inputs for pre-fabrication

- Less RFIs, change orders, accelerated permission process, fast response time of design team on

construction problems, better energy performance

Case Study 2- Museum Project in Europe

- Had many challenges – project team consisted of people from 10 firms located worldwide,

highly complex design of museum

- Team collaborated to include VDC in planning phase with objectives which included better

communication, facility performance, safety and project quality

- Had a separate consulting team for adoption of digital process – it provided training and tutorial

on digital software to design division and developed innovative tools which were specifically

used in this project

- Multidisciplinary collaboration achieved using cloud model management system – effectively

organized and managed large amount of data

- Finished BIM model contained data not only for construction, but also for O&M – provide

maintenance routine for different components

Success and Shortcomings of VDC

- 86% projects agreed towards the value addition to the project by adoption of VDC

o Value addition in form of cost saving, short construction duration, more efficient and

sustainable design, less rework, clash detection and real-time problem solving, and

better collaboration and project delivery

- Many AEC firms used VDC, but failed to track and monitor quantifiable metrics which are key

performance indicators. VDC needs systematic monitoring via quantifiable metrics which is one

of the shortcomings