As an organization that champions the cause for collaborative construction, research and development is critical to our own innovation. In serving the industry, we need to be able to identify trends in construction, in collaboration and in how these intersect.

To learn, we rely on research that we conduct through partnerships with academic institutions such as Michigan State University, as well as research conducted by notable organizations such as the Center for Integrated Facility Engineering (CIFE), Construction Industry Institute, Pankow Foundation and the Transportation Research Board.

But most important of all we learn from our members, the organizations behind the trend lines on graphs and the numbers in statistics columns. Through member profiles, success stories, awards applications, educational presentations and our committees we learn what works and what doesn't, and what more, we learn how it works, when it can be applied and why it's valuable. Research at IPI is a collective effort in which all of our members and supporters play a vital role.

The most important part about research is the resulting development of new tools and resources. For instance, when research showed us the correlation between project risk and the need for collaboration, we developed the IPI matrix, a partnering scalability tool. Our training content and materials are based on the challenges and success stories that our members’ project teams have faced. All of the tools that we've developed at IPI (specifications, white papers, guidebooks, standards and more) have grown out of our members' knowledge and experience.

Partnering Research Downloads