Procurement and Governance Choices for Collaborative Infrastructure Projects
Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 144, Issue 8
Abstract
Collaborative approaches to infrastructure procurement are increasingly popular around the world due to their potential to provide improved project performance compared with more traditional approaches. The problem is that project outcomes continue to be unpredictable. Previous research has shown that this is the case regardless of whether the chosen procurement approach is based on price or nonprice selection of the project team. This is a major choice that clients make, but the presented research shows that governance choices for project execution are more important. This is significant because clients tend to focus more on procurement choices and typically do not differentiate governance based on those choices. This needs to change, and the authors show that optimal governance configurations vary on the basis of the chosen type of team configuration. For example, three specific governance arrangements for workshops are highlighted for single teams, and two specific governance arrangements for risk/reward sharing are highlighted for multiple teams. This study identifies governance actions that are associated with superior time and cost outcomes on collaborative infrastructure projects in Australia run by experienced public-sector clients under the two procurement scenarios. Based on a survey of 320 senior managers, independent sample t-tests were conducted to compare the application of governance actions among three distinct groups of projects, based on type of team selection and type of project outcome. The study provides evidence of the most effective approaches to project governance in a country that is a world leader. The results provide much needed recommendations for improved project performance based on large-scale quantitative analysis, which before now has not existed. Overall, the study recommends more attention be paid to noncontractual governance under both approaches to team selection, although the specific actions recommended vary.
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Data Availability Statement
Data generated or analyzed during the study are available from the corresponding author by request. Information about the Journal’s data sharing policy can be found here: http://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/%28ASCE%29CO.1943-7862.0001263.
Acknowledgments
This study is supported by the Alliancing Association of Australasia, Project Delivery Services, and the Australian Research Council (Linkage Project No. 110200110). The authors gratefully acknowledge the assistance provided by Deborah Messer in managing the data collection process during the survey. The authors also acknowledge the support provided by the Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (CNPq, Brazil) to Dr. Fernanda Helfer through the research Grant No. 203576/2014-4. Finally, the KK Foundation in Sweden supported significant editing of this paper.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 144 • Issue 8 • August 2018
Copyright
©2018 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Oct 10, 2017
Accepted: Feb 21, 2018
Published online: May 30, 2018
Published in print: Aug 1, 2018
Discussion open until: Oct 30, 2018
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