Recently, we caught up with SmithGroupJJR’s Senior Vice President, William L. Diefenbach, FAIA, to talk about the different facets of collaboration in today's building landscape. No strangers to the concept of collaboration, DPR and SmithGroupJJR have worked on close to 50 projects together.

In this interview with Diefenbach, he discusses alternative project delivery methods, building information modeling (BIM), co-location, where innovative solutions come from, and more.

The Ray and Dagmar Dolby Regeneration Medicine Building at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF)—an award-winning DPR/SmithGroupJJR design/build project—is also discussed in the article. Built on a narrow, steep and sloped site, the $85 million, 67,000-sq.-ft,. LEED® Gold research facility required teamwork and creativity in the building process.