External sbt compile output not recognized by IntelliJ

Hi,

I am working on a fairly large scala/lift project, which is build with sbt.
The idea project is created via the sbt mpelton idea plugin.

We always use the sbt feature of incremental compilation/update with
sbt> ~; container:start; container:reload /
so every change in the IDE is compiled and instantly available in the container.

If I run a test in IntelliJ, it seems that all changed source files since last compilation (in IntelliJ) are compiled again.

Is there a way, that IntelliJ and sbt can work hand in hand?
So any change in the source code is compiled by only one process.
(E.g. can the running sbt process be used as compile server?)

Best regards,
Matthias