Case Studies on the Role of Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) Approach on the Establishment and Promotion of Trust

This article uses case studies to explore the IPD contractual approach from the standpoint of trust. It comprises two case studies of comparable IPD healthcare projects: Project A utilizes a single multi-party contract and lean construction; while Project B is transitional IPD-like by nature, incorporating a joining IPD agreement in addition to several two-party contracts. On Project B, team players are co-located and benefit from having past business relationships with one another. Project A, however, lacks these two attributes. These case studies identified attributes that establish and promote trust in IPD projects. These findings validate a theoretical IPD-Trust schema already established in the current published research; furthermore, the findings introduce seven new trust-building attributes leveraged by IPD. Additionally, the study compared trust across the two projects, and found that having pre-existing trust resulting from past business relationships, forming the best team, and co-locating project parties could be even more effective in creating trust than having a single multi-party contract with lean implementation without these attributes. This research also found that a single multi-party contract is more effective at building trust than multiple two-party contracts, since the latter pose the risk of inconsistently defined roles and responsibilities, and variable risk allocation across different agreements.