We literally wrote the book (and the national standard) that defines integrative process. Succinctly put, integrative process is systems thinking applied to a building project.

Like a system, a successful sustainable, or green, project is a solution that is greater than the sum of its parts. By intentionally examining the relationships between the engineered, cultural and natural systems in all building projects, significant affectiveness, including living system regeneration, can be realized. Project capital and operating costs can be reduced through the discovery of synergies between building systems. Simply overlaying individual "environmental" systems in isolation will not allow buildings and communities to benefit from the available connections and interdependencies that can be identified in an integrative, or whole system, design approach. In order to change the outcomes, the process must change. This is the fundamental challenge of designing and building cost-effective LEED^® and sustainable projects.

The core concept of integrative design is simple - everything in a building project is connected.

The opportunities for increased efficiencies and reduced first costs lie in the way that seemingly isolated systems interact with one another. An integrative process examines how to integrate building systems in a way that all of these systems are working together, much like those within a healthy organism.

"Optimizing components in isolation tends to pessimize the whole system – and hence the bottom line. You can actually make a system less efficient, simply by not properly linking up those components. If they're not designed to work with one another, they'll tend to work against one another." –P. Hawken, A.Lovins, H. Lovins, Natural Capitalism

Energy, for example, is one of the key building subsystems that cuts across all disciplines: by optimizing building orientation and massing, enhancing thermal performance, improving daylighting, increasing air distribution effectiveness, installing high-performance glazing, and reducing internal loads like lighting and plug loads, we can downsize a building's mechanical systems or eliminate HVAC system components like perimeter heating. The cost savings achieved through such mechanical equipment reductions often pays for the provisions that allowed for such downsizing in the first place. The resulting building will cost the same, but energy consumption and utility bills will be reduced dramatically.

Dozens more examples could be described here, but the point being made is that when all design decisions are based on similar notions of integrating the building and site’s systems, certain conventional components can be reduced in size or even eliminated altogether. The result can be dramatic in terms of energy efficiency, performance, cost savings and ecological impacts. Consequently, first cost can be neutralized and operational costs significantly decreased.

These kinds of outcomes require that project team engage in a different process. The process and its aims make all the difference to the ultimate success of any project. The traditional design process tends to be linear in nature and siloed by discipline. Integrative processes are iterative in nature and cross-disciplinary with project team members exploring the effects of other systems upon their own. There is a robust questioning of assumptions and inputs by the entire team. Traditional processes pursue isolated optimization and coordination, integrative processes pursue holistic systemic effectiveness.

The integrative design process is significantly front-end loaded with the majority of design work happening in the pre-design (or discovery), schematic design, and design development phases. The acronym DD means "design done". Design decisions are minimal in the construction documents phase so that phase is shorter so the whole process remains the same length as illustrated in the diagram below.

An integrative process recognizes that the potential opportunities to integrate cost-effective solutions are greatest at the beginning of the design process, in pre-design (discovery phase). Such pursuits need to be incorporated into the DNA of the design, not included as an afterthought layered on later in the process. Layering green building strategies on top of a traditional design, within a traditional process, always results in higher costs. This is why the perception in the market is that green buildings cost more. With an integrative design process focused on the synergies between building systems, holistic design solutions can be cost effective. In fact, an integrative process is the key to cost-effective green building projects.

‍A green building project is one that seeks to enhance the vitality of all life in its place.

Integrative process has become one of those ubiquitous terms. Ask any designer if they practice integrative process and the answer will likely be yes. So how can you tell an integrative process from a more traditional one?

Key characteristics of an integrative process include:

• A project owner who understands the benefits of a robust integrative process.
• The hiring of a project team who engages with each other from a co-learning perspective.
• The project team and key interested parties co-create and align around the project's potential and purpose to create buy-in from the beginning.
• A set of design principles (i.e. guides to action) are co-created and agreed to by all interested parties.
• Interested parties include community members, ecologists, investors and building users.
• A small core team guides the development of the project's design process, not just the architect.
• Process is emphasized ahead of strategies and solutions.
• The process is mapped out in detail around key subsystems including full team workshops and smaller dedicated meetings.
• The design process is arranged in iterative cycles of research/analysis feeding information into team meetings that identify the next round of research/analysis.
• The project clearly identifies high aspirations and defines failure as not setting them high enough.
• Project goals, performance targets and requirements are articulated for all key building subsystems in detail before design begins.
• Building rating system pursuits, like LEED, are treated as adding value to the project; they are not a simplistic point hunting exercise with line item costs assigned to the credits.  
• Everyone engages every issue early in the design process.
• The place of the project is used to source design strategies and solutions.
• The design process thoroughly examines the holistic implications of design choices to make fully informed decisions.
• The project seeks to examine synergistic, systemic interactions that have the potential to reduce construction cost while benefiting the social and natural systems the project is nested within.
• Analytical tools (energy modeling, water balance calculations, etc.) are used to examine integrative bundles of potential strategies.
• Cost estimating examines such bundles and their interactive effects, instead of line item pricing.
• Cost estimating is continuous and does not rely on "value engineering".
• Building systems are commissioned to ensure that they work as intended.
• Design and construction professionals remain engaged with the project post-occupancy to ensure performance targets are achieved.
• Building performance post-occupancy is monitored, measured and evaluated to create lessons learned which get applied to future projects.
• Building performance outcomes are dramatically better than before.
• Participants in the process feel as if they are working on something greater than themselves, that adds value to all life.

In order to change building performance outcomes, the design process needs to change. Traditional design processes are not designed to explore the interrelationships between building system components or the building and its relationship to the local socio-ecological systems within which it is implanted. Layering disintegrated strategies upon the project's design, especially later in the design process, is a recipe for adding cost and inefficiencies.

"It was a career-transforming experience. Virtually everybody ended up doing something that they had never done before, and relied on someone sitting across the table to make it work." –Scott Duffy, Architect

An integrative process also has the power to transform not only your design practice but your view of the world. Understanding that a building is not just a collection of things, but a whole set of complex interrelationships, enables us to view living systems this way. Our buildings have profound effects on the living places and systems they are rooted within. Applying an integrative process is the way that we can explore those connections and relationships in service to evolving the capacity of people and places to greater orders of health and dynamism.

How are the outcomes of your projects effected by the process by which they are designed, constructed and operated? What is the affect of the process on you?

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