Campus renewal project in Ontario goes a step beyond lean

Its like constructing a building backward.

Architects, construction companies and their clients normally exist in silos, waiting for the other to finish their work. Yet theres a design process that allows the three to work together, but it requires them in a sense to work in reverse.

Called integrated project delivery (IPD), it has a growing number of converts, at least judging from the palpable enthusiasm at one design meeting for a new 360-room student residence and academic building at St. Jeromes University. The Roman Catholic university is located on the campus of the University of Waterloo in Ontario. Students from one school regularly take classes in the other.

The new St. Jeromes buildings are being designed by committee. The universitys administration has had a hand in the plans from the start, from the size and configuration of the raked lecture halls in the academic building to the smallest furniture details.

No detail seems too small. At one of the preconstruction IPD meetings, all three parties discussed whether indoor trees in the academic building should be grown from the floor or from heavy, movable pots. They didnt strike an accord on that one. Time was pressing at the meeting.

Another issue was the problem of placing emergency fire hydrants in the stairwells of the student residence. As representatives of St. Jeromes noted, stairwell hydrants had been vandalized at another university by students wanting to see what a staircase waterfall would look like.

All of these design choices have to be mapped out, so that all parties are part of the decision-making process. Designing by committee may sound time-consuming, but typically it means that all choices, put into three-dimensional computer renderings, can be agreed upon by the main parties and by other building specialists involved at the beginning with fewer changes later.

At the meeting in a warehouse-sized room at the Mississauga branch office of construction company Graham Group Ltd., a computerized flowchart of tasks was projected for everyone to see.

Graham is leading construction for the St. Jerome build. Diamond Schmitt Architects is the designer. And administrators from St. Jerome are involved at every stage. Each design detail is charted, from plans for a particular mechanical space in one of the buildings to architectural revision work for the colleges chapel. Each task is given a completion time and inserted into the flowchart. Some of the smaller tasks may take just 30 minutes, but each needs to be checked off for all to see.

Were working backward from outcomes. In other words, we have milestones, and then we have things we need to get done to deliver these milestones, said Art Winslow, project director at Graham.

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Campus renewal project in Ontario goes a step beyond lean