TY  - CONF
TI  - Understanding barriers to IPD adoption in construction SMEs: insights from a collaborative workshop
C1  - Singapore, Singapore
C3  - Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC 34)
SP  - 1110
EP  - 1121
PY  - 2026
DO  - 10.24928/2026/0207
AU  - Aguirre, Yuly Andrea Sanchez
AU  - Hamzeh, Farook R.
AU  - Gonzalez, Vicente A.
AD  - MSc Graduate, Construction Engineering and Management, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, yuly@ualberta.ca, orcid.org/0009-0007-2915-6825
AD  - Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada, hamzeh@ualberta.ca, orcid.org/0000-0002-6606-3165
AD  - Professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair in Digital Lean Construction, Infrastructure Human Tech (IHT) Lab, Strategic Projects Insight Centre in Engineering (SPICE), Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, University of Alberta, Canada, vagonzal@ualberta.ca, orcid.org/0000-0003-3408-3863
ED  - Hamzeh, Farook
ED  - Poshdar, Mani
ED  - Garcia-Lopez,, Nelly P.
AB  - Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) is a collaborative project delivery approach intended to address fragmentation in construction projects. Despite documented benefits, its adoption among small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) remains limited, particularly due to challenges related to organizational practices, culture, and readiness for collaboration. Existing literature acknowledges these issues, yet empirical evidence capturing how such barriers are perceived and discussed by practitioners in SME contexts is still limited. This paper reports findings from a structured collaborative workshop conducted with construction professionals from SMEs operating in Alberta, Canada. The workshop was informed by Lean Construction principles and designed to facilitate practitioner discussion and reflection on IPD adoption. Qualitative data generated during the workshop were analyzed using thematic coding. Five thematic areas were used to structure the analysis: trust-based collaboration, knowledge and training gaps, implementation challenges, financial and risk-related concerns, and limitations in performance measurement. The findings indicate that IPD adoption among SMEs is shaped primarily by human and organizational conditions rather than technical considerations. The study indicates that structured collaborative workshops can support the identification of organizational barriers while enabling shared understanding of IPD-related challenges within SME environments.
KW  - Integrated Project Delivery (IPD)
KW  - collaboration
KW  - trust
KW  - lean construction
KW  - small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
PB  - 
T2  - Proceedings of the 34th Annual Conference of the International Group for Lean Construction (IGLC 34)
DA  - 2026/06/22
CY  - Singapore, Singapore
L1  - http://iglc.net/Papers/Details/2510/pdf
L2  - http://iglc.net/Papers/Details/2510
N1  - Export Date: 19 June 2026
DB  - IGLC.net
DP  - IGLC
LA  - English
ER  -