The purpose of this paper is to describe the recent efforts of a large publicly funded healthcare organisation in sidney, Australia to implement the IC “at scale and pace” in the messy, real world context of a District Health Service. The paper outlines the theoretical and practical considerations used to design and develop a localised IC Strategy informed by the “House of Care” model (NHS England, 2016). The need for cross-agency partnership, a shared narrative, joint leadership and an IC Strategy underpinned by proven theoretical models model is described. This paper highlights key factors relating to implementation and evaluation of a local Integrated Care (IC) Strategy in the real world.