Client-contractor collaboration in bouwteams: A contractor's perspective

Abstract

Recently, the Marktvisie (2016) expressed the need for more collaborative relationships based on equality and lately, a shift from adversarial to collaborative relationships is observed. The use of collaborative contracting strategies is increasing of which the bouwteam is an example. The bouwteam is a collaboration agreement during the design phase of a construction project, in which at least client, contractor, and designer work together to deliver a feasible and constructible design.  Even though the contractor is involved early the client is still in charge of the project and has control over the design, indicating that client and contractor are dependent upon each other. The goal of this research is to identify contractor's perspectives of collaboration in bouwteam, in order to find a way for contractors to influence client-contractor collaboration in bouwteams to achieve successful project delivery. Three contractor's perspectives are identified with help of Q-methodology, including a Q-set of success factors for collaboration in bouwteams, and are called relationship first, early involvement of the right people, and structure first. Even though the perspective value collaboration differently, they share the belief that mutual trust and a clear defined scope of the bouwteam are most essential for collaboration in bouwteams. To indicate how contractors can influence client-contractor collaboration, strategies are designed based on the identified contractor's perspectives and implementation of them. Since each client is different and a client-specific approach is desirable, three clients are identified in literature and for each one a strategy is designed. Combined, the strategies form a strategic framework that can be used by  contractors. To define a way for contractors to influence client-contractor collaboration, practical implications are established. For the contractor, it is important to define the scope early and clearly for successful project delivery. To achieve this, the contractor can identify the client charactertiscts of the involved client and determine the perspective of available personnel. The contractor's are a valuable reference for the contractor because they represent his playing field. The contractor can have a meeting with the client to elaborate on which success factors are most important for the bouwteam. With this information, the contractor can determine which perspectives are most appropriate to establish good collaboration. As a result, the contractor can develop a strategy and communicate this internally. For this, the strategic framework can be used as a guideline to give insights into possibilities and considerations. In doing so, relationship first and structure first are considered most suitable for good collaboration. Dependent on the client, the contractor can choose the right perspective to deploy to influence client-contractor collaboration to achieve successful project delivery. Nonetheless, in the end, defining the scope is one of the most important success factors for collaboration for the contractor, independent of the strategy to be develop. However, one has to question whether the bouwteam is a necessary approach for collaboration between client and contractor in a project. But even when this is not the case, the contractor's perspectives can stille be used since the collaborative principles from a contractor's perspective are similar.