Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) is founded on early and intensive collaboration among the owner, architect, and contractor. The contractor's involvement during the design phases allows for constructability reviews and system coordination to occur proactively. This process identifies and resolves potential conflicts, ambiguities, and missing information before construction documents are finalized. Consequently, the need for formal Requests for Information (RFIs), which are typically used to address these issues during the construction phase in traditional delivery methods, is dramatically reduced. This leads to a significant decrease in the architect's staff time required for managing and responding to RFIs.

A. Applications for Payment: IPD often uses complex compensation structures like target-cost models, which can require more, not less, detailed review and validation of costs by the architect.

C. Project Meeting Management: IPD is characterized by a high degree of collaboration, which typically necessitates more frequent and intensive meetings (e.g., "Big Room" meetings), increasing time spent on meeting management.

D. Field Observations and Reports: The architect’s core responsibility for observing construction for quality and design conformance remains critical in IPD, and the time commitment is not inherently reduced.

1. American Institute of Architects (AIA). (2007). Integrated Project Delivery: A Guide. On page 38, the guide states, "Because the contractor and key trades are involved from the earliest stages of design, constructability issues are discovered and resolved long before they can become expensive field problems. The result is a dramatic reduction in RFIs and change orders..."

2. El Asmar, M., Hanna, A. S., & Loh, W. (2013). Quantifying the Performance of Integrated Project Delivery. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 139(10), 04013012. This study provides empirical evidence that IPD projects outperform traditional projects on metrics including RFI reduction. The findings section highlights a statistically significant decrease in RFIs for IPD projects. (https://doi.org/10.1061/(ASCE)CO.1943-7862.0000744)

3. The Computer Integrated Construction (CIC) Research Group, The Pennsylvania State University. (2012). Integrated Project Delivery for Public and Private Owners. Section 3.2, "IPD Process," describes how co-location and early collaboration resolve issues that would typically generate RFIs in other delivery models, thereby streamlining the construction administration phase.