Project Partnering in Norwegian Construction Industry

Abstract

Although partnering is one of the preferred methods of project delivery to address adversarial behavior, there is still a lack of a thorough and descriptive definition over this concept. Certain requirements must be met if we want to classify a project in the partnering cluster. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to break down partnering into a list of tangible elements. In order to do that, we formulated the following research question: What is Partnering in construction industry?A comprehensive literature study was carried out to identify a theoretical list of elements used in partnering projects. Data from 26 partnering projects within Norwegian construction environment was collected during face-to-face semi-structured interviews conducted with key actors in the construction industry. Collected data utilized with findings from literature to develop a definition of partnering. Partnering is defined as a collaborative procurement form, focusing on integration of the project design and delivery by weighting collaboration and coordination between involved parties. In this paper, partnering is broken down to elements such as: value based procurement, compensation form based on open books, dispute resolution method, start-up workshops, joint objectives, follow-up workshops and early involvement of contractor etc. One or preferably more of these elements should be obtained in order to tag the project with partnering. By adding more elements, the purity of partnering would increase toward full collaborative environment.