Integrated Practice in Architecture: Mastering Design-Build, Fast-Track, and Building Information Modeling,   ISBN:9780471998495

Customer Rating: 

Integrated Practice in Architecture is now a required textbook in the course, "Integrated Project Delivery," at Harvard's Graduate School of Design.

Customer Rating: 

Just as integrated project delivery (IPD) offers a convenient and efficient single point of responsibility for the entire project undertaking, George Elvin's Integrated Practice in Architecture offers a convenient and effective single source compendium for this important new architectural design and construction delivery system and practice. Of the book's many great features, including the author's own experience in design and construction, extensive glossary and thorough index, perhaps the most valuable is the candid information Elvin manages to garner from the interviews themselves (there are over 50 of them!) with various professionals that are currently in the trenches working collaboratively with IPD. This book, the publishing world's inaugural attempt to so thoroughly define IPD - described here as the fastest growing method of project delivery - is groundbreaking in that it covers material not found anywhere else between two covers and should remain the most referenced text for this important subject for the foreseeable future. Of particular interest are the book's chapters on Communication in the integrated project team and Stewardship as one faces the future of IPD. Coupled with Finith Jernigan's comprehensive and ambitious BIG BIM little bim - The practical approach to Building Information Modeling - Integrated practice done the right way! (Paperback,) any architect, engineer, student, construction manager, contractor or building owner will be well-prepared to face the design profession's and construction industry's future.

Customer Rating: 

Architectural Record's review:

Ignore the ponderous title and be prepared to be happily astonished: George Elvin has written a concise, crisply crafted primer on interdisciplinary architectural thinking.

Elvin's expertise comes from a quarter century of experience running a design-build firm, plus years of teaching, most recently at Ball State's Building Futures Institute.

The book's terrible title notwithstanding, Elvin is not selling a simplistic joining of design-build and fast-track delivery through BIM software. He invites building professionals of all persuasions to recognize that the 21st century presents an array of rapidly changing economic, political, and environmental conditions that can offer opportunities for open-ended design, integrated interdisciplinary teams, and BIM software utilization. By carefully narrating experiences from 50 architecture firms, he maps the possibilities and risks that come into play when architects collaborate with all stakeholders and shows how good communication makes such teamwork work.

Architectural Record, Issue 6, Vol. 196, p. 60
Available at [...]

Customer Rating: 

The term "integrated practice" was quickly dispatched in 2007 when the California Council of the AIA presented "Integrated Project Delivery - A Working Definition" at the AIA National Convention - and for good reason. Integrated practice is an internal affair for each of the Owner, Architect and Contractor. Integrated Project Delivery brings all parties involved in the development of a project into the discussion. In addition, for the time being - and for some time into the future - any practice is going to involve both traditional and integrated project delivery. Finally, I found the book confusing in the way it tends to equate BIM with Integrated Practice, when the two are certainly seperable, if not independent. I don't know of a better book out there at present, but I wish I'd waited for one before buying.