Report a review of the concepts and definitions of the various forms of relational contracting

Partnering has been defined in many ways. It can be considered as an individual project mechanism or can be considered as a long term strategy. Alliancing is normally assumed to be a long term business strategy linking together client, contractor and supply chain. Relational contracting goes further than this and brings in the whole philosophy of the value chain and the linking of the interdependent parts within the construction project as a key business objective. This document aims to review existing definitions of these three concepts and present and overview of the current state of-the-art in terms of their use and implementation. The document should be useful for all of those project team members looking to sharpen their understanding of the various concepts and will also provide a platform for debating the current state of the definitions and implementations being used in Main Roads and Public Works Departments

Alliancing in Australia - No-Litigation Contracts: A Tautology?

A project alliance is a business strategy whereby client and commercial participants’ objectives are aligned. This paper takes an alliance project between public and private organizations in Queensland, Australia as a case study and reports the critical factors identified that influence the success of the alliance project. Alliancing is a system that provides a collaborative environment and a framework to adapt behavior to project objectives. It is about sharing resources and experiences, exposing the “hidden” risks. The case study suggests that leadership has a strong influence on the alliance climate. Commitment and action by the Project Alliance Board and, so, parent organizations have a strong impact on the team and alliance culture, indicating alliancing has a high chance of failure when there is inadequate support from top management. Like all relational contracting approaches, trust between alliance partners is important. This case study project takes a further step toward reinforcing the trust element by placing a No-Dispute clause in the alliance agreement. A review of the effects of the no-litigation clause upon the project team is presented. The writers conclude that without a positive approach to relationship management, a No-Dispute approach is impossible. Hence, they postulate that a “no-litigation” alliancing contract is essentially tautological, and go on to argue that a no-litigation contract cannot exist without the help of a clear relational vision, that leads to both soft and hard infrastructure to assist in decision making and relationship building

Report on client management

There can be many interpretations of relationship management. In this short report, we are concerned with relationships arising under an alliance project and in managing stakeholders under a more traditional approach to procurement. Each aspect is supported by an example project

Project alliancing at National Museum of Australia: Collaborative process

Project alliancing is a new alternative to traditional project delivery systems, especially in the commercial building sector. The Collaborative Process is a theoretical model of people and systems characteristics that are required to reduce the adversarial nature of most construction projects. Although developed separately, both are responses to the same pressures. Project alliancing was just used successfully to complete the National Museum of Australia. This project was analyzed as a case study to determine the extent to which it could be classified as a “collaborative project”. Five key elements of The Collaborative Process were reviewed and numerous examples from the management of this project were cited that support the theoretical recommendations of this model. In the case of this project, significant added value was delivered to the client and many innovations resulted from the collective work of the parties to the contract. It was concluded that project alliances for commercial buildings offer many advantages over traditional project delivery systems, which are related to increasing the levels of collaboration among a project management team

Final report implementation of relational management

Construction teams and construction organisations have their own distinctive cultures. There also exists an infrastructure, both social and contractual, which ensures that these projects within which the teams operate are completed successfully. It is these issues which this research has addressed. The project was instigated by Queensland Department of Main Roads, Public Works and John Holland Group in order to address how they might better implement relationship management (RM) on their construction projects. The project was devised initially in order to facilitate a change in culture which would allow the project to be run in a relational manner and would lead to effective performance in terms of the KPIs that the organisations set for themselves, described as business better than usual. This report describes the project, its outcomes and deliverable and indicates the changes that were made to the project during the research process. Hence, the initial premise of the project and the problem to investigate was the implementation of relational contracting: • throughout a range of projects; • with a focus on client body staff. The additions that were made to the project, and documented in the variations to the project, included two major additional areas of study: • client management and stakeholder management; • a live case study of an alliancing project. The context within which the research was undertaken is important. The research was driven by main roads with their desire to improve their operations by focusing on the relationship between the major project participants (however, stakeholder and client organisation management became an obvious issue as the research progressed, hence the variations). The context was initially focussed on main roads, public works and John Holland group organisations but it became clear very quickly that this was in fact an industry-wide issue and not an issue specific solely to the project participants. Hence, the context within which this research took place can be described as below: The deliverables from the project are a toolkit for determining RM needs in an organisation, a monograph describing the practical implementation of RM and the outline for a RM CPD and Masters cours

Exploring the attributes of collaborative working in construction industry

Due to the increased level of uncertainty of construction market and the variety of building functions, the practitioners in construction need work together more closely, which means a higher degree of collaborative working is often necessary. There is evidence that higher degree of collaborative working can produce more successful projects, but there has been only limited research to examine the definition of collaborative working. The lack of understanding of collaborative working resulted in confusion of application of more collaborative approaches e.g. partnering or alliancing. The work presented here is part of an ongoing PhD study which aims to explore the impact of collaborative working on construction project performance. The aim of this paper is to identify a spectrum of attributes of collaborative working, which will facilitate the understanding what collaborative working is, why collaborative working is needed and how to work together. In order to identify those attributes of collaborative working, the method of ‘identification test’ will be adopted, which is based on the recent related literature

Entrepreneurship, Dynamic Capabilities and New Firm Growth

This paper applies the dynamic capability framework to the study of new firm growth. Using a longitudinal database of 354 firms over their first ten years, we provide an explanation of new firm growth in terms of new product development, R&D, inter-firm alliancing, and exporting, activities that have been identified as denoting dynamic capabilities. In addition, an overview of empirical studies on employment growth in new firms is provided. The empirical evidence for this study shows that general firm resources have a much stronger effect on growth than the dynamic capabilities measured here (mainly inter-firm alliancing). High levels of human capital of the entrepreneur or resourcemunificence of the firm does not improve the value of dynamic capabilities for growth. Environmental dynamism ? a supposed boundary condition of the dynamic capability approach ? is not revealed to be a moderating factor on the effect of dynamic capabilities on new firm growth.

When the Balance Isn't Easy: A Case Study Exploring the Complications with Work-Life Balance Initiatives in the Australian Construction Industry

Studies of work and life balance often concentrate on the ways in which employees may require and use flexible work practices to cope with the demands of their other ‘non-work’ activities and responsibilities. This paper adds to our knowledge in this arena through presenting a case study of work-life balance. This case study focuses on managerial and employee issues in implementing organisational work life balance initiatives within the construction industry in Australia. For this case study, the workplace was an ‘alliance’ project, of four collaborating companies undertaking a large infrastructure project. The project management group determined that work-life balance was an important issue within the industry and consequently implemented a five-day instead of the industry standard six-day working week as a balance initiative for the workforce. A range of factors contributed to this five-day week initiative reverting to the original work schedule of a six-day working week. This paper explores these issues and analyses the competing priorities and demands of management in endeavouring to develop alternate strategies to maintain a positive work and life balance for employees. The analysis of this case suggests that management and employees were dedicated to improving work-life balance; however, a range of externalities resulted in not all initiatives being successful. Nevertheless, within the constrained choices, the management group instigated alternate initiatives

Employment Growth of New Firms

This paper provides an overview of empirical studies on employment growth in new firms and offers a systematic analysis of new empirical data to address the methodological issues identified. Using a longitudinal database of 354 firms over their first ten years, we examine factors associated with new firm growth in terms of R&D, inter-firm alliancing, new product development, and exporting; these are activities that have been identified as denoting dynamic capabilities. The empirical evidence gives some evidence for the positive association between dynamic capabilities and new firm growth. Inter-firm alliancing is the only indicator of dynamic capabilities that has a positive effect on new firm growth. No moderating effect on dynamic capabilities and growth could be seen to be exerted by the level of human capital and/or firm resources. Environmental dynamism – assumed to be highly relevant in the dynamic capability approach – is not revealed to be a moderating factor affecting the relationship between dynamic capabilities and new firm growth.