HCPD and Co-location go together, and it’s important to define both terms before continuing on to co-location management strategies.

• Highly Collaborative Project Delivery (HCPD): is a methodology that formally leverages select tenets of Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) under traditional contract forms.  HCPD is not IPD, “IPD-ish,” or “IPD Lite.”  HCPD has defined requirements, provisions, and incentives including the following four core tenets: a) Co-location, b) Collaborative BIM Implementation, c) Fee at Risk and Incentives, and d) Early Involvement of Contractor Team.
• Co-location: is lean construction technique which is intended to improve collaboration through greater team integration by physically bringing together designers, builders, users and owner together to work in a single location, generally on-site or within close proximity of the project site.

Co-location and its participation expectations should be clearly defined from the start of the project during the RFP process.  It is also important to define and enforce the “Who, Where, When and How” of co-location.

Who + When

– Once staff is designated into the SMT, PMT, or PIT categories, there should be clearly defined roles and responsibilities including time that should and will be spent in co-location. Team members should know when to expect other members to be active in co-location in order to optimize collaboration.

Where

– It goes without saying, but a proper co-location space needs to be developed and designated. All team members who need to be present at co-location should be able to physically report to the co-location space. There should be tools available so that all team members can work effectively in this co-location space.

How

– How includes many factors from co-location layout, to allocation of resources, IT/AV, facility management, communication protocols, meeting schedules, file sharing, etc…  All of these factors need to be defined and agreed upon by the project team in order to create accountability between team members for the efficiency, and in-turn the success, of co-location.