Congress Session Spotlight: Behaviors to Build a High-Performance Team in a Megaproject

What works—and what doesn’t—to build a high-performing team in a megaproject? On the $2.3B Sutter Santa Clara Acute Hospital project, the team quickly established processes for an Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) megaproject—but overlooked a critical item: how the team would behave and collaborate.

At the 2026 LCI Congress, John Eberhard and Paz Arroyo of DPR Construction, Sean Franklin of Sutter Health, and Melissa Barry of HOK will share lessons learned during their session Behaviors to Build a High-Performance Team in a Megaproject. They’ll cover what worked, what didn’t, and how they strengthened trust, accountability, and reliable commitments.

Attendees will learn practical strategies for aligning large teams, improving Last Planner System® practices in design, onboarding new members, and creating behaviors that support high-performance collaboration in the Big Room.

Learn more in our interview with this session’s presenters, which includes the project’s owner, general contractor, and architect.

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Q. Share a sneak peek of some of what you’ll cover in this session.

Paz: We will share the story of the project and how the team started to form and gel.

Filling a vital public health need with Sutter Health’s largest project to date.

Sean: This is a megaproject. Sutter Health is building an 850,000-square-foot hospital in Santa Clara. It’s a $2.3 billion project, and our largest one to date. We have recently opened ambulatory services in the area, and we are adding even more. However, we recognized that we were still missing acute care services. This project fulfills Sutter’s commitment to increase healthcare access. That was the main reason we created this hospital.

Speed to market and project changes.

While we were moving forward, there was a sense of, ‘just go design it.’ So that added stress for the team. And during that time, things came up: we want to add a floor, we want to take a floor off, then we want to add a tower, then we want to take a tower off, then we want to push out and add more operating rooms. We had a helipad and then we took it off. And so, even though they approved it, we were then pricing and resizing, and we’re trying to move forward.

It created challenges and distractions for the design team.

Coming together as a team.

Melissa: What you’re summarizing is a lot of the project changes that were all happening, but then we’ll also speak to how we all came together as a team.

We’re taking individuals from a multitude of different companies, and the teams are growing. Each week new people were being added to the big room. Those are some of the challenges that we speak to as well. It’s the growing pains of working together as a single team and not as 20-30 different companies. It’s making sure we’re communicating clearly and we’re aligned on goals.

Sean: Melissa has worked on large projects, but the Sutter IPD also requires co-location—needing to be there in person. The expectation of post-COVID working-from-home didn’t help that.

Paz: We will take an in-depth look at the challenges from everybody’s perspective, and then we will talk about the things that started to help the team, and how we are doing now.

Q. What are some practical strategies for aligning large teams and creating behaviors that support high-performance collaboration?

Listening more, being patient, and taking pauses as the team grew.

John: The expectations that we had as an early team weren’t necessarily vetted out with the larger team. As the larger team came on—the people who were going to put all the work in place—we were moving at a fast pace:

• As the team got larger, we had to find ways to listen a little bit more, understand what people were capable of, and adjust some of our expectations.
• We had to be a little bit more patient with people where we were. We were driving very hard, and over time, we had to take a step back, and we had to pause for a bit of time.
• We also had to let the owner settle on what they wanted so that we had some clearer direction.

We’ll talk about bringing the team together, including having lunch together more often, having a lunch area, and holding some team-building events and parties. That’s how people started to get to know each other. I think it’s very important, and we want to talk a lot about that.

Paz: It’s a very large project with 100 people in the big room every week, and then we have the VDC floor with 50 more people, so just getting to know people and who they are as a person is vital.

Utilizing Lean tools like Last Planner System®.

The whole network of commitments and implementing Last Planner System® was very big in this project. We had to get buy-in from the team to implement it, get everybody trained so they could understand the philosophy behind it, and make sure everyone knew how to manage the tools.

John: I think the onboarding process was big too. As the team grew and people were onboarded, we tried to find a better way of onboarding and getting them more engaged in the project. It was kind of like jumping in and catching a moving train. How do you help people do that?

The Respect for People process was something we had to align with the delivery expectations. We have to meet the goals and milestones, while also getting everybody on board with the process and behind it.

Staying flexible is important.

Melissa: We needed to keep asking: is what we’re doing working? Is there something that we need to change with either the meeting structure or schedule, or how we deliver as a team together? And so that flexibility has been a big thing. We made some changes to the meeting strategy that we’ll discuss.

John: One of the things we’ll share is that there are 100 people in the big room. These are all very accomplished people, but it still takes time to bring that many people together on a project of this size. Don’t set your expectations too high. Know that you won’t be a Swiss watch right out of the gate.

It will take time, and that’s one of the hardest things to deal with, especially when you’re me, and I’m the one responsible for keeping the project on schedule. It’s trying to be a little bit more flexible, like Melissa said. It’s working within the goalposts that we have, but listing a little bit.

In-person collaboration is key.

Paz: There’s a couple of very specific things that the team has done to improve because obviously this is not one and done. You need continuous improvement to build on the processes and get the buy-in from the team. Sean will talk about pulse surveys, and how we use that.

John: I think people collaborate and are much more productive in an environment where everybody’s working together. You can just walk down a couple of desks and talk to people.

We’ll talk about some of the consistent processes that we have within Last Planner System®, including:

• Daily huddles
• How the big room functions
• How we make commitments to each other
• Keeping people accountable while at the same time respecting people
• Clear communication
• Proper handoffs

We want to communicate and really foster that big room environment and utilize it.

Melissa: We’re here for seven years. We have to get along and have fun.

Q. What do you hope attendees gain from this session?

1. It won’t be easy from the beginning, but there are strategies that work.
   Paz: As they embark on big projects or they’re thinking about joining a big project, I hope they understand the reality of it. It’s not going to be easy from the beginning, but there are strategies that work. We’ll also share what did not work at the beginning, including rushing and pushing. The idea is to be honest that this is a hard thing to do.
2. There’s time to course correct.
   Melissa: If things are challenging and the project is facing issues, there is plenty of time to course correct. Whether it’s a seven-year project or a one-year project, taking that time to get to know the team members has benefits in delivering a more cohesive project.
3. There’s value in an in-person big room.
   Sean: My takeaway is that forcing people to come to the office in person every day is not an enjoyable situation for everyone. However, it’s proven within Sutter to be the key to successful projects.
   Melissa: As long as you’re respecting the roles and the work that they’re doing, because I think that is the challenge. If the work isn’t able to get done, then that’s an issue.
   John: Yes, the Sutter Way is known throughout the industry. I hope we can get across the message that this is a big project with a lot of moving pieces, and it’s been a struggle, yet we’ve been very successful so far.
   Sean: And it’s still positive for the most part.
   John: And everybody still likes each other. That’s very important.

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