This study aims to investigate how relationships between main contractors and
second-tier subcontractors are constituted, particularly after project experiences that
deteriorated relationships. Trust is regarded as a structural property of relationship and
the duality of trust provides an analytical perspective of investigating the constitution
of relationship. This process-based research used case study method and collected data
from semi-structured interviews with actors from both main contractor and
subcontractor companies. Findings reveal five processes, learning, relating,
collaborating, controlling and routinising, that helped constitute trust and thus supply
chain relationships. It reveals that relationship failure had strong impacts on initial
trust and practices at the front end. The research also shows that constituting
relationship and trust is an intended but also an unintended consequence of project
organising enabled and constrained by structures of project ecologies. This study
contributes to knowledge in that it 1) provides an analytical approach, from the
perspective of structuration theory, and relational approach to understanding
construction supply chains, 2) empirically demonstrates the dynamics of trust, in the
shadow of the past as well as contemporary lifecycle of the construction project, and
3) links construction project management field with the wider field of social science
