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I appreciate the premise that collaboration must boil down to real and specific behaviors and definitive, actionable practices. Perhaps the question will bear some fruit, buy in my experience the most productive elements of collaboration are really not the same on any give project, so asking people to define them is like asking a professional sports team to describe how they win a game. You get the same answer every time, but somehow it leaves you unsatisfied.
Collaboration requires a desire to make decisions in the correct manner, for which I like to use the word "bias." There are literally millions of decisions made by hundreds of people on every project. Each decision, small and large, contributes to the varying degrees of success for the project, and each is made with a certain bias toward efficiency, toward value, toward creating or eliminating conflict or problems for the person making them as well as for others on the project. This bias is influenced by any number of issues including what side of the bed one woke up on, to previous experiences with other design or construction individuals, to more pragmatic issues like project profitability. Many of these influences of bias are virtually impossible to affect for a client or a project leadership team, so placing emphasis on ones that can be influenced is clearly the goal. To date, that has been project profitability, which, it is assumed, will translate from behavioral changes in firm management into behavioral changes on down the line. Trouble is; management has been able to negotiate their project profitability not be tampered with, and in some cases, actually to be guaranteed by the collaborative (IPD) process. No positive behavioral change is going to begin with management in this manner because no incentive has been created to change behavior. What ever happened to the captain going down with the ship?
To really understand what collaboration means, one has to ask; where does the need for collaboration come from? What problem is it meant to address; not for architects or builders, but for clients? Clients ultimately drive change, not service providers, so what is it that is appealing to clients in the concept of collaboration? I think the need is derived from two places. First is the general frustration that clients feel when acting as the referee between design firms and construction firms. Second is the cost; or more specifically, the risk that clients are forced to assume due to the division between design and construction responsibility. The perception is that a collaborative environment where everyone works together will at least diminish these troublesome issues for the client. I personally think that collaboration of this sort, in itself will only minimally address these concerns which go much deeper and can really only be properly resolved through a major overhaul of the AEC industry and service procurement methods including the Brooks Act/Qualifications Based Selection process, but that is too complex an issue to try to elaborate on here.
Some seem to believe that the answer to collaboration lies in technology, or at least in a combination of technology and process change. Technology is a tool; process is a means to accomplish a goal. The goal must change; technology and process will naturally follow. Collaboration (or no collaboration) is a cultural issue, and what changes culture? The economic and political climate change culture (and vice versa to a limited extent). The fact is that the AIA and others cannot create change; they can only react to it, and they are trying. They are asking what they can do to accommodate collaboration as a means to solve problems. So is collaboration the solution or is it only the observable result of the real solution?
As I see it, there are three major problems in the prevailing project design/construction delivery models. I refer to them as the three paradoxes of the AEC industry. These are the problems. What are the solutions?
- The Value Paradox - there is no reliable benchmark for value comparison in design/construction.
- The Cost Accountability Paradox - neither the A/E nor Contractor is accountable for cost.
- The Mutable Contract (Change Order) Paradox - there is no incentive to minimize change orders or provide fair market pricing.
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Alan Burcope AIA, MBA, LEED AP
VP Project Development
HBE Corporation
Saint Louis MO
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