Distrust
Holding back the real numbers, assumptions, uncertainty, or risk.
Candor: put reality on the table early.
Advancing a Culture of Collaboration
People Progress Projects Together
A cross-industry initiative to advance a culture of collaboration, regardless of delivery method.
Founding Partners
Our Mission
We believe collaboration should be the standard for how our industry delivers projects regardless of delivery method.
We are advancing a culture of collaboration where owners, designers, contractors, and project partners put project success at the center of how we work together. Sharing information openly, surfacing challenges early, and solving problems together to strengthen project outcomes, program predictability, and the experience of the people who build them.
What We See Today
Regardless of delivery method, project teams face rework, miscommunication, and frustration — not for lack of skill, but for lack of alignment. Designers design, builders build, owners manage, construction managers coordinate, but too often, project teams struggle to operate as one integrated team. Across the country, brilliant people are working in silos. Too often, project challenges are compounded not by a lack of capability, but by gaps in coordination and alignment.
Across projects, we see four recurring dynamics that can pull teams apart. They may be reinforced by contracts, incentives, hierarchy, or past experience, but they are not inevitable. Leaders and teams can choose different behaviors.
Being right
Defending a position to be proven right rather than working the gap together.
Inquiry: work the problem, not the position.
Silos
Keeping expertise in its own lane rather than integrating it into shared value.
Integration: optimize the whole, not only your scope.
Self-protection
Pre-deciding the exit and the fault rather than co-stewarding the outcome.
Shared accountability: raise concerns early and solve across boundaries.
Why This Matters Now
The pressure is greater than any one project
Our industry builds some of the most complex projects in the world, yet too often we build them from separate corners.
Ongoing challenges
Aging infrastructure
Limited funding
Growing uncertainty
Reliable partners. Predictable outcomes.
Owners need
- Reliable partners
- Predictable outcomes
- Responsible use of limited dollars
- Confidence to deliver capital programs
Industry partners need
- Market certainty
- Capacity to invest
- Ability to retain talent
- A reasonable understanding of risk
When collaboration is weak:
Costs rise
Schedules slip
Risk gets pushed
Trust erodes
The workforce challenge
We are losing experience faster than we are replacing it.
RetirementInstitutional knowledge is leaving the industry.
CompetitionEvery industry is competing for the same talent.
CulturePeople choose places where they feel valued, safe, heard, and respected.
Recruitment alone won’t solve the workforce challenge.
How people experience our industry’s culture matters to whether they choose to join — and whether they choose to stay.
What We Believe
This is leadership applied to how we build.
A Project-First Culture
A Project-First culture flips the dynamic.
It means the owner’s purpose and the project’s agreed outcomes become the team’s shared north star: every decision, activity, and conversation serves the success of the project. Owners, CM consultants, designers, contractors, and trade partners remain accountable for their distinct professional, contractual, and organizational obligations while acting as co-stewards of shared success. This is collaboration not as a buzzword, but as a performance strategy. Teams with a Project-First mindset ask not only, ‘What protects my position?’ but also, ‘What gives the project the best opportunity to succeed?’
Collaboration Is a Leadership Choice
Collaboration is a leadership choice, not an automatic result of any delivery method.
Design-Bid-Build, CMAR, CMGC, Progressive Design-Build: long-standing industry behaviors and ways of working can follow us into even our most innovative delivery models. No delivery method guarantees collaboration, and every delivery method can be strengthened by clear expectations, transparent information, aligned incentives, and disciplined team behaviors. On every project, the choice to collaborate is ours to make.
Leadership Applied to How We Build
This is leadership applied to how we build, not just who builds.
Collaboration does not mean avoiding conflict, surrendering professional judgment, or agreeing on every issue. It means surfacing disagreement early, challenging ideas without diminishing people, making clear decisions, and remaining accountable for execution after the decision is made.
The Connection: Projects, Programs, People
Better projects. Predictable programs. A workforce that stays.
Culture is not adjacent to performance; it is one of the mechanisms that produces it. The connection is reinforcing: collaborative behaviors improve project outcomes, repeated outcomes create predictable programs, and predictable programs retain people and institutional knowledge that strengthen the next project. Change how teams work and you change the project. Repeat those behaviors across projects and you change the program. Build predictable programs and people stay, grow, and carry what they learn into the next project.
Make the Commitment
By signing, I commit to:
- 1Joining
Joining a cross-industry effort to advance a culture of collaboration — regardless of delivery method.
- 2Engaging
Engaging in the discussion and putting collaborative behaviors into practice across project teams and industry partners.
- 3Advancing Project-First
Advancing a Project-First mindset — the belief that how we show up and lead for the shared success of the project is how we deliver better projects together.
How to Engage
- 01Join the InitiativeSign the Commitment.
- 02EngageParticipate in conversations and bring your perspective.
- 03Put It Into PracticeBring the Project-First mindset and collaborative behaviors to the teams and projects you are part of.
- 04Carry It ForwardShare what works so the next project can benefit from what we learn together.
A Project-First commitment in practice
Share OpenlyPut reality on the table early.
Solve TogetherWork the problem, not the position.
Own the OutcomeAct as co-stewards of shared success.
Learn ForwardCarry what works into the next project.
