The longer the contract period, the higher the chance that major changes will arise. Thus a greater reliance on the established relationships is needed to maintain the contractual bond in PPP project. Relationship Management (RM) can therefore be expected to be even more valuable in the PPP context. This paper, aims to investigate current perceptions and experiences of RM in PPP projects and more importantly, to identify the Critical Success Factors (CSFs) for RM in PPP projects. By means of an empirical questionnaire survey geared towards PPP practitioners with direct hands-on experience, the opinions were solicited, analysed and compared in relation to potential PPP RM success factors. The survey findings indicate that industry practitioners currently lack a consistent understanding of concepts and applications of RM, given that it is relatively new in PPP. However, they do think that RM is very important to improve the present performance of PPPs. Future PPP business opportunities can also be increased by effective RM. The top four CSFs for RM are found to be commitment of senior executives, defining the objectives, integration of the different divisions and a multidisciplinary team. However, the relative importance presently assigned for each of the above factors is insufficient, and commitment from senior management is perceived as the most difficult factor to improve.

The briefing process is critical to the successful delivery of construction projects. Although a number of briefing guides have been developed, attempting to address the problems of briefing, they are often criticized as being too general and implicit. This paper describes a structured framework for identifying and representing client requirements (CRs) in the briefing process. It integrates the value management (VM) methodology with function analysis system technique (FAST) and functional performance specification (FPS) to enable the client organization and project team to systematically identify, clarify and clearly represent CRs in the briefing process. It comprises four interrelated phases: preparation, information, analysis and evaluation. This paper starts with a critical review of previous work in briefing and function analysis, followed by an introduction to the research methodology and detailed illustration of the proposed framework. The use of this framework can facilitate and lead to systematic identification and clarification of client requirements and the formation of a more precise and explicit representation of these requirements. The limitations of the approach are also discussed in the paper.Briefing, value management, client requirements, function analysis, functional performance specification,

No abstract

No abstract

PurposeThis paper aims to investigate briefing in the construction industry in Hong Kong. Specifically, it sets out to discover the current practices on briefing in the industry and the limitations of these practices.Design/methodology/approachThis study consists of a literature review and a pilot study, structured focus group interviews and semi‐structured interviews.FindingsThe study has revealed that current practices, although have been in operation for a long time, have a number of limitations such as lacking in a comprehensive framework; lacking in identification of client requirements; lacking in contributions from clients; lacking in involvement of stakeholders; and inadequate time spent on the briefing. It is concluded that these limitations must be properly addressed by the industry in order to improve the briefing and to avoid subsequent problems in the design and construction phases, and that more resources should be allocated.Originality/valueSo far, little work has been undertaken to study the practice of briefing in sufficient depth in the construction industry in Hong Kong. This paper improves our comprehension of the nature of client requirements and provides valuable insights into the details of briefing in the public and private sectors of the local industry.