It relates to how we work in landscape design, but it’s incongruous.

There’s a guide I referred to regularly in a former life. This book assumes you know what you’re doing, so there are no instructions, just a brief description of the finished product. The 1953 book, Le Répertoire de la Cuisine, by Louis Saulnier, covers virtually every classical French preparation of most foods. For instance, it offers 52 citations on filet of sole.

There is a close correlation between the way Saulnier set up his book and the function of performance specifications in landscape design and project management. A performance spec might be a picture or a written description of the required result, but with no process given on how to get there. Just like any practitioner worth his salt would know that a Cognac-Deglazed Pork Chop Garnished with Duxelles would be sauteed and given a quick pan sauce and topped with a reduction of mushrooms from sauteed shallots, red wine, a bit of tomated demi-glace, and chervil. There would be no question of how to prepare Faisans Bohémienne, just based on the description (pheasant from a casserole stuffed with small foie gras studded with truffles, and at service, brandied and lit on fire).

As part of the important continuing education as a design professional, I sometimes review offerings by a leading webinar provider. Sure, I could take a quick course reviewing stormwater culvert design or brush up on hydraulic circulation and pipe sizing for a swimming pool design. Each might be a good pursuit, but in fact I don’t need to spend 2-3 hours on a course with explanations and filler. As we know the functions and implementation behind these landscape elements, what I really need is just a couple of construction details to clarify things.

Integrated Project Delivery

It is this diversity of experience that can inform other parts of our work and life. When we use all these random skills that a well-composed team can bring, and when we get teams established from the beginning, great things happen.

The old way

In a conventional approach, one that is in fact obsolete for many projects but unfortunately is still required by many governmental and other entities, the lead consultant adds team members through the project. First the landscape architect, then the surveyor, engineer, and building architect, then the entitlement (permitting) professionals and estimators, and then the contractors and subs, and so forth. This puts each profession into its own silo, with little ongoing communication and a measurable loss of continuity between them. This conventional approach is an incubator for mistakes, surprises, cost and schedule overruns, and contention between professionals who should work toward a successful finished project. Less communication means exploiting fewer opportunities. If a key player is not on the team yet, they cannot contribute to it.

People come into a project and need to catch up. If an owner lacks experience, they will hire people in the wrong order and cause even more issues. Say they hire first a focused position like a civil engineer: They solve for problems with less concern for anything but the straightest line to their end-goal. For instance, they might suggest clearing a site of all trees (I’ve seen it a hundred times), so they can survey more easily and plan for auto and pedestrian ways and building locations. This usually results in the clear cutting of beautiful trees and shrubs that we can never affordably replace. The plants could have contributed to a finished project with built-in mature plantings and less need for drainage control structures. When a site is clearcut, it loses much of its ability to regenerate surface water runoff.

A better approach

A building architect will have a broader view of a project and will consider many more issues at once. They will allow for a greater range of opportunities.

Even better, a landscape architect has a decidedly global view of projects: They consider the regional, local, and site-specific context before doing anything else. When an owner brings on the landscape architect first to develop the project program, they assess opportunities and constraints based on that program.

Buildings, drives, walks, and important additions like pools and outdoor kitchens are more likely to find their best placement and arrangement when developed holistically. When we plan for how people move through and use a site for the best experience, whether it is an unfolding sense of discovery or an impressive one-liner, we uncover as many options as possible and keep them available. This is not possible when selecting the wrong team members and engaging them in the wrong order.

Bring key players on at the beginning

When the landscape architect helps to select the surveyor, the building contractor and trades, the engineers and building architect, and coordinates them at the start of the project, the silos go away and communication flows. We leave resentments and contention at the door. Nobody needs to catch up, and important ideas and advancements are less likely to fall through the cracks. When we ask a team to work together from the start, the hierarchy is more even and less pronounced. People have more opportunities to contribute in unexpected ways, which brings us to:

Unconventional Expertise

Counterintuitively, more than a decade of prior work in a different context has informed professional development in landscape architecture at a deeper level, from swimming pool design to garden design and outdoor kitchens. And the fact is, everyone has an interesting background and much to share from life experiences. The plumbing contractor might have former experience as a painter or their spouse might be an interior designer who likes to share and educate, and that plumber brings relevant knowledge and input on issues where we least expect it. Bringing people on early allows for this kind of fermentation of ideas and a longer timeline of reflection for the benefit of the project by all those on board.

Integrated Project Delivery offers a compounding benefit in many parts of a project. Most importantly, if we just decide to take advantage of the many resources available to us in our diverse team by first, selecting the right people, second, bringing them on early, and third, by engaging them throughout the process, we almost guarantee that the project will be a success with fewer surprises. When we keep our mind open to ways of learning and rely on past knowledge, skills, and abilities, both in us and in other team members, it saves time and other resources, and it brings forth a range of opportunities we otherwise would not have imagined.