Strategic Partnering Between Contractors and Designers

Abstract

In recent years, the concept of strategic partnering has gained attention in the Norwegian construction industry. As a project delivery method, strategic partnering shares similarities with the Lean project delivery perspective as they both seek to achieve more collaborative projects. The paper has structured strategic partnering into three essential Lean Construction (LC) elements: contract, organization, and collaboration. Consequently, this paper contributes to knowledge about strategic partnering between contractors and designers by answering the two research questions: 1) How is the current practice associated with strategic partnering, and 2) What are the experiences with strategic partnering between contractors and designers.An exploratory case study was conducted to examine how strategic partnering can be improved in future projects. A combination of literature review and semi-structured interviews were used for data collection.The findings reveal an improvement potential when implementing strategic partnering in the construction industry. The paper concludes that more attention should be paid to contract elements and the project organization at the company levels to improve strategic partnering. However, at the individual level, good effects have been identified. Findings also showed that external factors like political decisions can lead to postponements and thus changes in personnel in the organization.

Strategic Partnering Between Client, Contractor, and Subcontractor

“…The parties did not prepare a formal agreement in advance that established that the partnership should continue through all the projects. The lack of an up-front strategic alliancing agreement seems to be in line with previous research (see for example Paulsen et al, 2022). An explanation may lie in the nature of projects.…”

“…According to Karanjawala and Baretto (2018), the implementation of Lean Construction in partnering has resulted in more open communication, trust and transparency, and identification of constraints and non-value adding activities. The concept of strategic partnering corresponds with the Lean philosophy of continuous improvement as it aims to achieve learning outcomes both at the organizational level and across different projects (Paulsen et al, 2022). Furthermore, since strategic partnering is lasting for more years and over several projects, it can be easier to implement Lean principles in the involved organizations.…”

“…It is therefore of interest to gather and collect experiences from parties who practice strategic partnering in their projects. Lately, there has been a study about strategic partnering between a contractor and a designer in Norway (see Paulsen et al, 2022).…”

Strategic Partnerships – Best Practice Across Norway and Denmark

“…The former is a collaboration between a client and a delivery team (Architects, designers and main contractor) that are specific to a particular project (Lahdenperä, 2012). With strategic partnering, a delivery team collaborate on more than one project, but a separate contract for each specific project (Paulsen et al, 2022). However, with a strategic partnership, a client offers a portfolio of upcoming projects over several years in a single package to a delivery team (Vaerdibyg and Rebus 2021a).…”

“…However, with a strategic partnership, a client offers a portfolio of upcoming projects over several years in a single package to a delivery team (Vaerdibyg and Rebus 2021a). Research from Denmark and Norway shows great potential when implementing strategic partnering and strategic partnerships in the construction industry (Gottlieb et al 2020;Paulsen et al 2022;Vaerdibyg and Rebus 2021a;. In Denmark, they have moved from project partnering to a focus on strategic partnerships with long-term contracts whereas in Norway the recent focus has been on strategic partnering.…”