Implications of the Integrated Project Delivery Research in Practice

There is an increasing trend towards more integrated project delivery (IPD) methods in the construction industry. However, the definition of IPD and its practical framework includes a wide range of collaborative principles or strategies. A synthesis of the research on IPD can provide a better understanding of the variety of practices and dimensions of what has been studied as IPD. Such a synthesis can help future researchers and practitioners to frame benefits and challenges associated with the range of IPD practices. In this paper, the authors report on an on-going research to perform a tertiary review of the research on IPD. In addition, the authors explore potential applications of the synthesis in the case of a project under construction in Peru, emphasizing the implementation of the lean concepts in IPD. The deductive tertiary review is used to identify IPD principles and was complemented by an inductive case study where the authors explore IPD implementation besides motivations and barriers to its application. The case study is being built by a company with extensive expertise in using lean, while it is the first trial of the company on implementing IPD. Practitioners can use the observations as a broad perspective of IPD to facilitate justification of implementing strategies associated with the IPD practices.