IPD, or Integrated Project Delivery, is one name used to describe a particular team—centered approach to building a project. I recently received an invitation to attend a seminar called Collaborative Project Delivery. In my opinion, giving a name to how projects are delivered or constructed has had little impact on improving subcontractor profitability. This is because the same problems occur on IPD and non-IPD jobs.

When we peel back the onion we find that project teams set unrealistic, fixed start and end dates for each construction activity, most of which are overlapping activities. When the schedule begins to slip, owners and general contractors begin a schedule recovery process, which typically results in subcontractors performing work out of sequence. This results in inefficiencies, including delays, disruptions, congestion, trade-stacking and acceleration. Once this chaos begins; subcontractors begin to see their budgets negatively impacted.