AIA, AGC, and CURT Form Collaborative Group to Transform Design and Construction Industry

In an effort to address and solve problems caused by industry fragmentation, lack of clear communications across professions, and old business models, the American Institute of Architects (AIA), the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC), and the Construction Users Roundtable (CURT) announced the formation of a new collaborative working group to spearhead design- and construction-industry transformation issues for the three organizations.

“This undertaking represents an unprecedented level of collaboration between building owners, designers, and contractors,” say group leaders Norman Strong, AIA vice president; William Tibbitt, former CURT president; and Doug Pruitt, AGC vice president nominee. “The formation of this group is an owner-driven and fully cooperative response to the recent AIA/AGC Construction Industry Summit and a second three-party meeting at the AIA/AGC Joint Committee in Colorado Springs, CO. Together, we look forward to tackling the theoretical and strategic challenges to design and construction industry transformation by working across traditional stakeholder boundaries.”

Over the past 2 years, collaborative discussions between the AIA, AGC, and CURT, have resulted in three significant milestone publications and events, all focused on industry transformation.

1) The shared drafting of CURT white paper 1202 in August 2004, titled “Collaboration, Integrated Information and the Project Life Cycle in Building Design, Construction and Operation” (http://www.aia.org/SiteObjects/files/ip_ productivity.pdf).

2) The continued mutual effort resulting in CURT white paper 1003, “Optimizing the Construction Process: An Implementation Strategy,” written in 2005 and just published (http://www.aia.org/SiteObjects/files/ip_optimizingconstructionprocess.pdf).

3) The jointly hosted AIA/AGC Construction Industry Summit, held in Washington, D.C., on May 8-9, 2006 (http://www.aia.org/SiteObjects/files/ip_summit_final.pdf).

In a continued spirit of collaboration, this new group will build upon the platform of the white papers and the summit. Headed up jointly by equal representation from AIA, AGC, and CURT, the working group will address the need for new business models, insurance products and contracts, as well as industry primers and how-to’s.

Group leaders will develop a formal action plan over the course of the summer for release during the CURT meeting in Detroit, Sept. 11-13, 2006.

This information was reprinted with permission from the American Institute of Architects (www.aia.org). For more on the Associated General Contractors of America (www.agc.org) and the Construction Users Roundtable (www.curt.org), visit the associations’ websites.