The Convergence Pointe

Every owner eventually has to choose a delivery method. Design-bid-build, CM at risk, design-build, IPD. On paper they all promise something different. In practice, the choice ripples through every decision that follows: the team, the risk, the contingency, the contract, and ultimately whether the project succeeds or fails. In this episode, two of the most experienced practitioners in collaborative project delivery break down what owners get right, what they get wrong, and why the contract is never the solution, only the enabler.
GUESTS
Howard Ashcraft is a Partner at Hanson Bridgett LLP and one of the leading construction attorneys in the country on project delivery and integrated project delivery. He has structured 150 to 180 pure IPD projects over his career and was among the first practitioners involved in developing what became lean integrated project delivery. He is a Fellow of both the American College and Canadian College of Construction Lawyers, a member of the National Academy of Construction, an Associate Fellow at the Said Business School at Oxford, and the author of a forthcoming book on contracting for integrated project delivery to be published by Wiley in 2026.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/howard-ashcraft-7485178/
James Pease is Vice President of Health Major Capital Projects at UCSF Health, where he is currently leading a $7 billion-plus program including a $4.5 billion adult hospital expansion and a $1.62 billion children's hospital expansion, both using integrated project delivery. He has delivered more than $8 billion in complex healthcare projects across his career and has worked on more than 25 IPD projects. He is also the founder and executive editor of leanipd.com, a practitioner-focused resource on lean and integrated project delivery.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamespease/
Chad Kruse is Executive Director and Project Advisor at Nebraska Medicine, where he provides business support for strategic and campus planning. Chad joins as co-host throughout the series, offering the owner's perspective as the conversation moves from concept to concrete.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-kruse-6714b47/
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
Why design-bid-build makes perfect sense until you have actually worked in design and construction, and what the data says about final project cost versus bid price
How to match delivery method to project type, owner capability, and the likelihood of scope change during execution
Why the contract is an enabler and not a solution, and what happens to collaborative projects when things go sideways under a traditional contract
How owner resource requirements differ dramatically across delivery models, and why IPD front-loads people rather than back-loading them
How contingency works differently in fragmented versus collaborative delivery, and why shared project contingency changes team behavior
Why risk cannot be transferred through a contract and what actually happens to risk when you try
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 - Introduction and framing the delivery method decision
02:21 - Howard's background: 150 to 180 IPD projects and why project delivery became his focus
03:40 - James's background: $8 billion in healthcare delivery and the leanipd.com resource
05:01 - Why design-bid-build makes sense on paper and falls apart in practice
09:45 - How project complexity and likelihood of change should drive delivery method selection
11:52 - Owner resource requirements: how delivery method shapes team size from start to finish
15:17 - More people upfront, fewer at the end: James on IPD staffing at UCSF
20:45 - How to phase team onboarding and avoid bringing partners on before you need them
23:37 - The Brooks Act, the Spearin doctrine, and how procurement law affects collaborative delivery
25:59 - Public versus private procurement rules and why Canada has more IPD public projects than the US
28:33 - How owners ensure competitive pricing in negotiated contracts
32:36 - Why James uses all delivery models at UCSF, and what drives the selection on each project
36:34 - Contingency: how it works in fragmented delivery versus collaborative delivery
39:13 - The risk register as a secret weapon versus a shared tool, depending on delivery model
43:40 - Can contracts actually transfer risk, or does risk just move to the least capitalized party
47:50 - Parting shots: what owners need to understand first before choosing any delivery method
RESOURCES MENTIONED
Ashcraft, H. (forthcoming 2026). Contracting for Integrated Project Delivery. Wiley.
leanipd.com - James Pease's practitioner resource on lean and integrated project delivery
The Spearin Doctrine: United States v. Spearin, 248 U.S. 132 (1918)
The Brooks Act: governing quality-based selection of design professionals on federal projects
Kingston Third Crossing, Ontario, Canada: referenced as an example of mid-project design adaptation under a collaborative delivery model
WHERE TO FIND HOWARD
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/howard-ashcraft-7485178/ Hanson Bridgett LLP: https://www.hansonbridgett.com
WHERE TO FIND JAMES
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamespease/ Lean IPD: https://www.leanipd.com

Front-end planning has been studied for decades. The data is clear, the tools exist, and the ROI is documented across more than 1,300 projects and $100 billion in capital work. And yet the industry is getting worse at it, not better. In this episode, we talk to the researcher who helped build the evidence base, and ask why none of it seems to stick.
GUESTS
Dr. Ed Gibson is President and CEO of the National Academy of Construction and Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University. A civil engineer by training, Ed has spent more than three decades researching front-end planning and capital project performance. His work through the Construction Industry Institute helped develop foundational tools including PDRI, the Project Definition Rating Index, now used on projects across every major sector. If you have ever used the term front-end planning instead of pre-project planning, there is a good chance Ed's research influenced why.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/g-edward-gibson-jr-pe-phd-dist-m-asce-nac-600b9128/
Chad Kruse is Executive Director and Project Advisor at Nebraska Medicine, where he provides business support for strategic and campus planning. Chad joins as co-host throughout the series, offering the owner's perspective as the conversation moves from concept to concrete.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-kruse-6714b47/
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
Why the industry is performing worse at front-end planning today than it was 30 years ago, and what specifically drove that decline
The three phases of front-end planning and what a mature scope actually means before a project moves into execution
Why the best time to kill a project is during planning, and how good front-end work makes that decision possible
What PDRI measures, how it is commonly misused, and why the discussion it generates matters more than the score
Why front-end planning went from 90% technical to 90% people in Ed's view over his career
How to staff a planning team, why new graduates should never lead planning work, and what experience profile actually predicts success in the owner's seat
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 - Introduction
01:47 - What the National Academy of Construction is and why it exists
04:34 - Why front-end planning is getting worse, not better, and what COVID accelerated
07:05 - Slow trigger, fast bullet: why speed at the front creates delay at the back
11:33 - The three phases of front-end planning: initiation, concept, and detailed scoping
14:55 - Mercedes appetite, Volkswagen budget: scope creep and where it actually starts
17:16 - Why keeping end users out of planning backfires every time
25:45 - How to get the right stakeholders in the room without sinking the process
27:40 - Front-end planning as both art and science: form versus function
33:53 - PDRI: what it is, how it works, and why the conversation it generates is the real value
46:17 - How to build and train an owner's planning team from the ground up
52:50 - Ed's five things you need to know about front-end planning
56:16 - Why Ed reversed his view: from 90% technical to 90% people
RESOURCES MENTIONED
Gibson, G.E., Wang, Y., Cho, C., and Pappas, M. (2006). "What is preproject planning, anyway?" Journal of Management in Engineering, Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 35-42.
Ed Gibson's research on front-end planning performance: approximately 1,300 projects representing over $100 billion in capital work, conducted through the Construction Industry Institute
PDRI, Project Definition Rating Index (Construction Industry Institute): construction-institute.org
National Academy of Construction: naocon.org
Gallup CliftonStrengths
WHERE TO FIND ED
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/g-edward-gibson-jr-pe-phd-dist-m-asce-nac-600b9128/ National Academy of Construction: https://www.naocon.org

Nobody wakes up wanting to be an owner. But the owner's seat might be the most consequential seat in design and construction, and it is the least understood. In this first episode, we start where every project starts: with the person who has to hold it all together before anyone else is even in the room.
GUEST
Chad Kruse is Executive Director and Project Advisor at Nebraska Medicine, where he provides business support for strategic and campus planning across one of the country's major academic medical centers. With 25 years in the industry spanning general contracting, design firms, and owner roles, Chad brings a perspective that is equal parts operational and deeply human. He is one of the clearest thinkers in the business on what it actually means to lead from the owner's seat.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-kruse-6714b47/
WHAT YOU WILL LEARN
Why the owner's role is consistently underestimated and what genuine owner leadership actually looks like in practice
How the pressure to move fast at the start of a project creates problems that no amount of good design or construction can fix later
Why picking the right team has more to do with people than brands, and how Chad approaches that decision under time pressure
How front-end planning works at the project level, and why you cannot rush or replicate that time
What procurement and contracting choices signal about an owner's priorities before a single drawing is made
Why Chad's institution pursued IPD, what surprised them when they got into it, and what integration actually looks like when it stops being a philosophy and becomes daily behavior
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 - Introduction and what this podcast is trying to do
03:29 - Chad's background, from GC to owner, and why he keeps coming back
07:21 - What a good owner actually looks like and the stewardship mindset
09:30 - The convergence challenge: clinical, operational, financial, and design, all at once
13:25 - Why you cannot fast-forward front-end planning, at the project or career level
17:46 - A real $30M project that started with a phone call and what made it work
19:50 - How procurement and contracting decisions shape everything downstream
22:13 - Why owners need sociology more than technical expertise
27:37 - Picking teams: people over brands, and what that looks like under pressure
32:26 - Staying ahead of how the industry is changing
34:03 - IPD in practice: what Chad's institution learned going through it for the first time
39:39 - Advice for anyone who wants to get into the owner's role
RESOURCES MENTIONED
Gallup CliftonStrengths
National Academy of Construction
WHERE TO FIND CHAD
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-kruse-6714b47/ Nebraska Medicine: https://www.nebraskamed.com