The ReAlignment Group, Ltd.
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Co-Location and IPD Big Rooms
In Design-Build and Integrated Project Delivery (IPD), designers and constructors work together to design the best, most buildable, highest value plans and specifications to meet the Owner's needs.
The most efficient way to achieve complete collaboration is to get all the parties together in a Big Room. This may be a weekly meeting, or a continuous co-location for a period of days or weeks.
These teams need experienced professional facilitation. If Lean is incorporated, this is also a perfect time to "tightly couple learning and action" for the participants.
- Facilitators and Co-Location managersneed to develop a plan for and manage the Big Room "soft start" with leaders from each of the groups who will be participating (see Footnote 1.a., below) to set the ground rules, create the atmosphere, begin the collaboration from the top and generally plan the "hard start" when everyone arrives.
- In IPD this Big Room team not only includes architects, engineers, general contractors and construction managers, but also design consultants, major trade subcontractors, and representatives of owners and end users including facilities managers, major tenants; for medical facilities, doctors and nurses; and for security facilities, security consultants and managers.
- During the Big Room"soft start" it is wise to facilitate the creation of a BIM strategy team pulling together the BIM practitioners from all the different firms - over a series of meetings the BIM strategy team develops a unified strategy for working in databases, through firewalls, working remotely, etc.
- Running a Big Room includes facilitating dozens of "big room" and small group meetings, facilitating daily Core Team Leadership meetings and facilitating multi-team "design crits", if the team chooses them.
- A Big Room requires coordination and high levels of communication. Most communication is verbal, but because so many smaller groups are developing their work product in parallel with the others and at the same time, additional resources may be needed:
- Continuous redesign of program meetings, using the PDCA cycle ("Plan, Do, Check and Act") as a guide;
- Developing a multi-media library for use of project participants;
- Developing and maintaining a collaborative "town square" using a collaborative technology like Jive SBS;
- Developing and maintaining a common calendar that can be used where Outlook cannot be synched through different company firewalls;
- Developing and maintaining a commitment log system;
- Training all project participants in facilitation to create a "culture of facilitation";
- Developing and mentoring A-3 guidelines and a mentorship program; and
- Developing a responsibility matrix to build an organization chart from the requirements of the Program rather than from the top down.
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