Designing a partner-selection process that encourages the formation and continuation of successful partnerships

Abstract

The challenges that urban area developments are facing are becoming more and more complex. Additionally, these developments often come along with major uncertainties, risks, and unknowns regarding the end-results. This has resulted in the publication of several documents in the past few years pointing out that the current tender system may not always provide for the most optimal urban area developments - calling for more efficient, flexible and quality oriented tender procedures. More specifically, the partner-selection method, which is a new phenomenon, has been introduced in practice. Many professionals say that this new method could be the answer to the rising complexities in urban area developments. The aim of this research is therefore to explore its potential and its credibility. More importantly, the goal of this research is to design a partner-selection process that is robust and trustworthy through organising it in such way that it accommodates for the formation and continuation of successful partnerships. The main research question of this graduation research is therefore: ‘How can a partner-selection process be designed so that it enables the formation and continuation of successful partnerships in municipal land developments’ To answer this question, literature studies were carried out in order to 1) obtain knowledge on the newly introduced partner-selection process and its ingredients, and 2) to map the success factors that lead to successful partnerships. Three case studies were then explored through conducting semi-structured interviews in order to 1) obtain further knowledge on the partner selection process, 2) to enrich the current knowledge on the mapped success factors, and 3) to tailer the most important success factors specifically to the partner-selection process and to obtain an understanding on how the success factors can be organised specifically in the partner selection process. The information obtained from the empirical studies was then used to design an event based partner-selection process model.

This process model is a proposal which presents and illustrates an example of how a partner-selection process could be designed and organised. It is specifically directed at municipalities, but could of course be used by other parties to obtain a further understanding on what the partner-selection methods entails. Furthermore, all municipal land developments are different, meaning that each project requires a customised process. The events and elements of the proposal can therefore be moved around until seen as fit. All in all, the proposal serves as a tool to guide municipalities when setting up a partner-selection process.