The Convergence Pointe

The Convergence Pointe

Design and construction is one of the most complex, relationship-driven industries in the world, and one of the least examined. Convergence Pointe goes beyond the finished product to explore what actually happens in between: the decisions, the tradeoffs, and the tension between vision and what gets built. Host Sean Mulholland sits down with owners, designers, contractors, and researchers to walk through the full lifecycle of a project, from pre-planning and procurement through design, construction, and into operations. Every conversation is guided by a single question: how do we make this industry better? Long-form, unscripted, and direct. No product pitches, no echo chambers. Just dialogue with people who have skin in the game.

Episodes

  1. 23h ago

    Ep 3: No Perfect Answer with Chad Kruse, James Peace, Howard Ashcroft

    Every owner eventually has to choose a delivery method. Design-bid-build, CM at risk, design-build, IPD. On paper they all promise something different. In practice, the choice ripples through every decision that follows: the team, the risk, the contingency, the contract, and ultimately whether the project succeeds or fails. In this episode, two of the most experienced practitioners in collaborative project delivery break down what owners get right, what they get wrong, and why the contract is never the solution, only the enabler. GUESTS Howard Ashcraft is a Partner at Hanson Bridgett LLP and one of the leading construction attorneys in the country on project delivery and integrated project delivery. He has structured 150 to 180 pure IPD projects over his career and was among the first practitioners involved in developing what became lean integrated project delivery. He is a Fellow of both the American College and Canadian College of Construction Lawyers, a member of the National Academy of Construction, an Associate Fellow at the Said Business School at Oxford, and the author of a forthcoming book on contracting for integrated project delivery to be published by Wiley in 2026. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/howard-ashcraft-7485178/ James Pease is Vice President of Health Major Capital Projects at UCSF Health, where he is currently leading a $7 billion-plus program including a $4.5 billion adult hospital expansion and a $1.62 billion children's hospital expansion, both using integrated project delivery. He has delivered more than $8 billion in complex healthcare projects across his career and has worked on more than 25 IPD projects. He is also the founder and executive editor of leanipd.com, a practitioner-focused resource on lean and integrated project delivery. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamespease/ Chad Kruse is Executive Director and Project Advisor at Nebraska Medicine, where he provides business support for strategic and campus planning. Chad joins as co-host throughout the series, offering the owner's perspective as the conversation moves from concept to concrete. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-kruse-6714b47/ WHAT YOU WILL LEARN Why design-bid-build makes perfect sense until you have actually worked in design and construction, and what the data says about final project cost versus bid price How to match delivery method to project type, owner capability, and the likelihood of scope change during execution Why the contract is an enabler and not a solution, and what happens to collaborative projects when things go sideways under a traditional contract How owner resource requirements differ dramatically across delivery models, and why IPD front-loads people rather than back-loading them How contingency works differently in fragmented versus collaborative delivery, and why shared project contingency changes team behavior Why risk cannot be transferred through a contract and what actually happens to risk when you try TIMESTAMPS 00:00 - Introduction and framing the delivery method decision 02:21 - Howard's background: 150 to 180 IPD projects and why project delivery became his focus 03:40 - James's background: $8 billion in healthcare delivery and the leanipd.com resource 05:01 - Why design-bid-build makes sense on paper and falls apart in practice 09:45 - How project complexity and likelihood of change should drive delivery method selection 11:52 - Owner resource requirements: how delivery method shapes team size from start to finish 15:17 - More people upfront, fewer at the end: James on IPD staffing at UCSF 20:45 - How to phase team onboarding and avoid bringing partners on before you need them 23:37 - The Brooks Act, the Spearin doctrine, and how procurement law affects collaborative delivery 25:59 - Public versus private procurement rules and why Canada has more IPD public projects than the US 28:33 - How owners ensure competitive pricing in negotiated contracts 32:36 - Why James uses all delivery models at UCSF, and what drives the selection on each project 36:34 - Contingency: how it works in fragmented delivery versus collaborative delivery 39:13 - The risk register as a secret weapon versus a shared tool, depending on delivery model 43:40 - Can contracts actually transfer risk, or does risk just move to the least capitalized party 47:50 - Parting shots: what owners need to understand first before choosing any delivery method RESOURCES MENTIONED Ashcraft, H. (forthcoming 2026). Contracting for Integrated Project Delivery. Wiley. leanipd.com - James Pease's practitioner resource on lean and integrated project delivery The Spearin Doctrine: United States v. Spearin, 248 U.S. 132 (1918) The Brooks Act: governing quality-based selection of design professionals on federal projects Kingston Third Crossing, Ontario, Canada: referenced as an example of mid-project design adaptation under a collaborative delivery model WHERE TO FIND HOWARD LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/howard-ashcraft-7485178/ Hanson Bridgett LLP: https://www.hansonbridgett.com WHERE TO FIND JAMES LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamespease/ Lean IPD: https://www.leanipd.com

    51 min

  2. May 26

    Ep 2: Front-End Planning and Why It's Failing with Dr. Ed Gibson and Mr. Chad Kruse

    Front-end planning has been studied for decades. The data is clear, the tools exist, and the ROI is documented across more than 1,300 projects and $100 billion in capital work. And yet the industry is getting worse at it, not better. In this episode, we talk to the researcher who helped build the evidence base, and ask why none of it seems to stick. GUESTS Dr. Ed Gibson is President and CEO of the National Academy of Construction and Professor Emeritus at Arizona State University. A civil engineer by training, Ed has spent more than three decades researching front-end planning and capital project performance. His work through the Construction Industry Institute helped develop foundational tools including PDRI, the Project Definition Rating Index, now used on projects across every major sector. If you have ever used the term front-end planning instead of pre-project planning, there is a good chance Ed's research influenced why. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/g-edward-gibson-jr-pe-phd-dist-m-asce-nac-600b9128/ Chad Kruse is Executive Director and Project Advisor at Nebraska Medicine, where he provides business support for strategic and campus planning. Chad joins as co-host throughout the series, offering the owner's perspective as the conversation moves from concept to concrete. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-kruse-6714b47/ WHAT YOU WILL LEARN Why the industry is performing worse at front-end planning today than it was 30 years ago, and what specifically drove that decline The three phases of front-end planning and what a mature scope actually means before a project moves into execution Why the best time to kill a project is during planning, and how good front-end work makes that decision possible What PDRI measures, how it is commonly misused, and why the discussion it generates matters more than the score Why front-end planning went from 90% technical to 90% people in Ed's view over his career How to staff a planning team, why new graduates should never lead planning work, and what experience profile actually predicts success in the owner's seat TIMESTAMPS 00:00 - Introduction 01:47 - What the National Academy of Construction is and why it exists 04:34 - Why front-end planning is getting worse, not better, and what COVID accelerated 07:05 - Slow trigger, fast bullet: why speed at the front creates delay at the back 11:33 - The three phases of front-end planning: initiation, concept, and detailed scoping 14:55 - Mercedes appetite, Volkswagen budget: scope creep and where it actually starts 17:16 - Why keeping end users out of planning backfires every time 25:45 - How to get the right stakeholders in the room without sinking the process 27:40 - Front-end planning as both art and science: form versus function 33:53 - PDRI: what it is, how it works, and why the conversation it generates is the real value 46:17 - How to build and train an owner's planning team from the ground up 52:50 - Ed's five things you need to know about front-end planning 56:16 - Why Ed reversed his view: from 90% technical to 90% people RESOURCES MENTIONED Gibson, G.E., Wang, Y., Cho, C., and Pappas, M. (2006). "What is preproject planning, anyway?" Journal of Management in Engineering, Vol. 22, No. 1, pp. 35-42. Ed Gibson's research on front-end planning performance: approximately 1,300 projects representing over $100 billion in capital work, conducted through the Construction Industry Institute PDRI, Project Definition Rating Index (Construction Industry Institute): construction-institute.org National Academy of Construction: naocon.org Gallup CliftonStrengths WHERE TO FIND ED LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/g-edward-gibson-jr-pe-phd-dist-m-asce-nac-600b9128/ National Academy of Construction: https://www.naocon.org

    1h 1m

  3. May 23

    Ep 1: The Owner's Role with Chad Kruse

    Nobody wakes up wanting to be an owner. But the owner's seat might be the most consequential seat in design and construction, and it is the least understood. In this first episode, we start where every project starts: with the person who has to hold it all together before anyone else is even in the room. GUEST Chad Kruse is Executive Director and Project Advisor at Nebraska Medicine, where he provides business support for strategic and campus planning across one of the country's major academic medical centers. With 25 years in the industry spanning general contracting, design firms, and owner roles, Chad brings a perspective that is equal parts operational and deeply human. He is one of the clearest thinkers in the business on what it actually means to lead from the owner's seat. LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-kruse-6714b47/ WHAT YOU WILL LEARN Why the owner's role is consistently underestimated and what genuine owner leadership actually looks like in practice How the pressure to move fast at the start of a project creates problems that no amount of good design or construction can fix later Why picking the right team has more to do with people than brands, and how Chad approaches that decision under time pressure How front-end planning works at the project level, and why you cannot rush or replicate that time What procurement and contracting choices signal about an owner's priorities before a single drawing is made Why Chad's institution pursued IPD, what surprised them when they got into it, and what integration actually looks like when it stops being a philosophy and becomes daily behavior TIMESTAMPS 00:00 - Introduction and what this podcast is trying to do 03:29 - Chad's background, from GC to owner, and why he keeps coming back 07:21 - What a good owner actually looks like and the stewardship mindset 09:30 - The convergence challenge: clinical, operational, financial, and design, all at once 13:25 - Why you cannot fast-forward front-end planning, at the project or career level 17:46 - A real $30M project that started with a phone call and what made it work 19:50 - How procurement and contracting decisions shape everything downstream 22:13 - Why owners need sociology more than technical expertise 27:37 - Picking teams: people over brands, and what that looks like under pressure 32:26 - Staying ahead of how the industry is changing 34:03 - IPD in practice: what Chad's institution learned going through it for the first time 39:39 - Advice for anyone who wants to get into the owner's role RESOURCES MENTIONED Gallup CliftonStrengths National Academy of Construction WHERE TO FIND CHAD LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/chad-kruse-6714b47/ Nebraska Medicine: https://www.nebraskamed.com

    48 min
  • 3 Episodes

About

Design and construction is one of the most complex, relationship-driven industries in the world, and one of the least examined. Convergence Pointe goes beyond the finished product to explore what actually happens in between: the decisions, the tradeoffs, and the tension between vision and what gets built. Host Sean Mulholland sits down with owners, designers, contractors, and researchers to walk through the full lifecycle of a project, from pre-planning and procurement through design, construction, and into operations. Every conversation is guided by a single question: how do we make this industry better? Long-form, unscripted, and direct. No product pitches, no echo chambers. Just dialogue with people who have skin in the game.

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  • Creator
    The Convergence Pointe
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  • Episodes
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