The balancing act: How public construction clients safeguard public values in a changing construction industry

Public bodies acting in the construction industry have to deal with major transitional issues, such as globalization and urbanization, population ageing, climate change and digitalization. Moreover, the public domain, private parties and society are becoming increasingly interdependent. As a result, safeguarding public values in the built...

Rethinking Roles and Responsibilities in the Context of the Public Private Value Shift From a Client Perspective

In today’s construction industry we witness an increase in public private collaboration in the delivery of public goods. New public private structures affect the traditional notion of accountability, bringing along a strong emphasis on performance and outcome. By transferring operational responsibility to the market parties in public private...

Contradictions in Project Based Learning: A Qualitative Study of Three City Development Projects

In complex product system industries such as construction, innovation and explorative intra-project learning are critical aspects for developing and delivering complex and customized products. Some research has, however, demonstrated that it is difficult to utilize learning from development projects in the permanent organisation. Hence, the...

Behind the Scenes of Public Construction Clients – Collecting Data on Commissioning Activities and Organisational Approach

The understanding of public commissioning activity is fairly limited, with national and European research primarily focusing on large scale projects, European procurement procedures and new construction. However, most construction activities involve small scale projects and assignments performed by smaller scale semi-public organisations such as...

Exploring the field of public construction clients by a graphical network analysis

Because public construction clients form the majority of construction clients and procure over 40% of the construction output in most countries, they are important actors in the construction industry. Yet, the field of research on clients is still underdeveloped. In order to identify the research gaps in this field, a graphical network analysis...

Mapping fields of interest: A systematic literature review on public clients in construction

Purpose: To create an overview of scientific knowledge currently available on public clients in order to set up a research agenda for public commissioning in construction. Background: Public clients are important actors and change agents in the construction industry. While sharing characteristics with private clients, they differ on terms of...