Collaborative Practices for Federal Construction

The importance of an integrated design process and the use of integrated teams have long been recognized as a core concept in creating high-performance buildings. Employ Integrated Design Principles is the first of the Guiding Principles for High Performance and Sustainable Buildings, which federal agencies are directed to apply to building projects. Methodologies for implementing integrated processes have been developed, but there is a lack of research on the effects of using such a process, particularly for federal government projects.

The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 provided GSA an opportunity to study several of its new construction and major renovation projects to better understand how project teams collaborated to deliver high performing buildings on-time, on-budget while also meeting sustainable design performance goals.  The three projects GSA studied offer insights on a range of collaborative strategies, processes, and tools that were successfully used by the project teams. These case studies document how integrated teaming strategies and collaborative practices impacted these projects and improved building performance.  They also identify best practices that can be replicated in future federal projects.

The three projects GSA studied:

• Edith Green-Wendell Wyatt Federal Building, Portland, OR
• Federal Center South Building 1202, Seattle, WA
• Wayne N. Aspinall Federal Building and U.S. Courthouse, Grand Junction, CO