Any industry is focusing on creating an environment that is as safe as possible for everyone that is involved. This is no different for the construction industry. However, the construction industry is placed second in the ranking of most dangerous industries. The Dutch Safety Board, being an independent administrative body, has recommended to integrate a third party into the contractual general terms and conditions such as the UAC for integrated contracts. The objective of this research is to examine whether there is any potential to integrate a third party into the UAC-IC 2005 contract. This potential is being examined using a comparison between the UAC-IC 2005 and FIDIC Yellow Book 1999, a contract in which a third party is already present. In this comparison, the main focus points are the "vital tasks & responsibilities" that are necessary in order to safeguard safety on site, safety of the surrounding area & structural safety. This thesis has found that the three types of safety can be improved if the vital tasks & responsibilities are properly performed. These tasks & responsibilities mainly relate to the management of project specific and safety related risks, and to the safety approach that is a result of this risk management system. From a theoretical point of view, the UAC-IC 2005 and the Dutch Building Decree are able to facilitate these vital tasks & responsibilities. The ON is responsible for most of the vital tasks & responsibilities, and the OG has the possibility to use an external control mechanism to verify this. The practical situation is however different. It is not uncommon that other aspects like time, or money can get more important for the contracting party than proper risk management processes and the corresponding safety approach. Work is not executed as intended, but rather as work-as-actually-done. The OG’s incentives in the UAC-IC can be insufficient for him to effectively perform this external control mechanism. This leads to a possible situation in which no internal nor external control mechanism is present, which is to the detriment of safety. The Engineer, being the party that is responsible for an external independent control mechanism in the Yellow Book’s quality assurance system, does have more incentives to actually make him perform this external independent control mechanism effectively. This incentive has its origin in the uncapped liability which the Engineer can be held liable for. If the Dutch version of the role of the Engineer would be integrated into the UAC-IC, he would be able to improve the three types of safety when he takes over the responsibility for the external control mechanism from the OG under the assumption that this external control mechanism will be performed more effectively. This assumption is valid if the Dutch Engineer would have a comparable liability as in the White Book. Since TNR 2011 would most likely be used in the Dutch construction industry, the liability in TNR 2011 must be increased for Dutch Engineers in order to be comparable to FIDIC’s White Book.

This research aims to identify gain-and-pain-sharing methods to foster a collaborative environment to create win-win situations and create mutual objectives. To do so, gain-and-pain-sharing methods that can positively influence a collaborative environment are explored. This study is restricted to the Dutch construction sector because it is for Dutch implementation. Second, the research scope includes projects with high complexity because otherwise, gain-and-pain-sharing do not have effects, and most problems arise due to complexity. Lastly, the research focuses on the client side, since the client chooses the type of contract and criteria. The objective of the research is to provide clients with insight into the gain-and-pain-sharing possibilities and practical implementation steps to implement a gain-and-pain-sharing mechanism to incentivise collaboration. In the literature, different definitions of gain-and-pain sharing were identified and combined into the following definition: ‘Gain-and-pain sharing is defined as an agreement that allows the parties in a construction project to share profits or cost savings and to share losses due to errors or cost increases. Mutual benefits are achieved through gain sharing. Benefits could, for example, also be a reward for one’s delivered work, a bonus or recognition, and losses are the risks’. Based on this definition, the following gain-and-pain-sharing concepts were identified: -Bonus-malus; -Sharing of new created benefits; -Risk pot; -Target cost. The different concepts have different effects and different reasons for use as gain-and-pain sharing mechanisms. The way to deploy the mechanism depends on the choice based on the vision and strategy that the client has for the project. These two elements in turn depend on the company and project objectives, project specifications, experience with collaboration concepts, risk aversion, market conditions and one of the most important conditions, the scope certainty. It can be concluded that the gain-and-pain-sharing mechanism is deployed by different concepts for different purposes to incentivise collaboration and create mutual objectives. This coordination for the implementation of the mechanism is custom-made for each project based on a number of steps. The step-by-step plan that supports the implementation of the gain-and-pain-sharing mechanism. The case studies demonstrated that such a mechanism has been successful in those cases and is an added value for collaboration and the realisation of common goals.

There is no argument against the need to achieve other value types in infrastructure projects to meet the actors' expectations and broader organizational goals. The value engineering approach, later adjusted under the term 'value management,' achieves desired functions at the lowest cost through a set of workshop activities. Integrating value engineering with benefits management could expand what value means and identify additional value. However, benefits management has limited applicability to infrastructure projects due to inconsistent definitions and perceptions regarding value creation as well as its literature lacks an understanding of the appropriate governance mechanisms. Consequently, this study aims to explore how integrating value engineering with benefits management can help practitioners consider value more holistically in infrastructure projects by answering four sub-questions that aim to explore value engineering and benefits management, conceptualize governance mechanisms, assess how value engineering is currently conducted in built environment projects, and identify steps practitioners can take to expand the integration of these methods. The cases' workshop activities were structured into seven phases: preparation, information, function analysis, creative, evaluation, development, and presentation. The governance mechanisms used included coordination, building-capability, goal-setting, monitoring, and roles & decision-making. Based on both theoretical and empirical results, the developed project governance process involves several workshop activities and governance mechanisms, where value is defined in terms of impact and then working backwards through a multi-phase process. The process is divided into the following phases: usefulness & necessity phase, preparation phase, information phase, outcome and impact analysis phase, creative phase, evaluation phase, development phase, and presentation and reporting phases. A visual representation of this process can be seen in Figure 4.1 in the original document. Once developed, a workshop confirmed its feasibility for implementation because all phases were clearly explained. Experts' recommendations included linking these phases with work packages, conducting risk analysis before the "creative phase," and making it more visually appealing through a flowchart full of icons or colors to help technical actors better understand it and thus make it more practical. Integrating the benefits management and value engineering approaches can be achieved by incorporating them into the already-established value engineering multi-phase process. This requires considering all scales along which value evolves, starting from impact, and evaluating them once identified. By doing so, actors are equipped to take more parameters into account, mitigating the uncertainty between expected and realized value. Additionally, governance mechanisms play a crucial role in aligning all actors' expectations towards achieving high-value goals by bringing them together towards a shared goal.

The Dutch public infrastructure faces several challenges in the coming decades. A significant portion of public infrastructure such as bridges need to be replaced or renovated in the coming decades, and the public infrastructure authorities have set an ambitious goal to become completely circular by 2030. Service-oriented infrastructure (Infrastructure-as-a-service) is presented as a solution to require contractors to increase circularity as they would be incentivized to retain the value of assets. This study aims at developing a research framework to be used by public clients assessing the viability of a service-oriented approach. The study uses the Double Diamond design framework to first conduct interviews and codify them, followed by designing a framework through iterative designs and validating it in an interview with a public client (Dutch water board). Grounded theory is used for analyzing the interviews from specific infrastructure assets to general theory. The framework presents six criteria [Innovation, Integrality, Public authority & ownership, Supply, Circularity and Duration] on which a service-oriented approach should be analyzed. The study finds that clients first and foremost focus on their statutory duties, while optimization of infrastructure is seen as risky if the fines for failing to provide an adequate service are manifold in comparison to the perceived benefit. The study finds that a service-oriented approach should be considered only in specific (mostly high-technology) cases where the benefit of continuous improvement through the service-delivery is evident. The study contradicts an earlier study in the Netherlands, which declared that all stakeholders should shift towards a service-oriented approach in order to guarantee circularity. The timeline to become completely circular is too short to let the market build up a complete supply of circular infrastructure and supply it on a service-oriented basis.

The integrated contract UAV-GC 2005 is gaining popularities in Dutch construction industry, which is meant to bring added value to the employer. Nevertheless, due to embedded culture and other social factors, people are still strongly influenced by the ‘old way of working’. For instance, project problems between employer and contractor are often settled too late, which leads to excessive amount of costs. As a result, parties begin to blame each other, and vicious cycle starts. From a legal point of view, it is deemed that the duty to warn obligation of UAV-GC 2005 does not necessarily play its role in facilitating problem solving between the employer and the contractor. While in an international level, the early warning of NEC3 ECC originated from U.K. construction industry is catching increasingly attention all over the world, which is known as its ‘proactive risk management’ approach in dealing with project problems. Under early warning obligation, parties are obliged to inform each other of any matter which could affect costs, completion, progress or quality of the project. It is even praised as ‘jewel in the crown’ by many. Therefore, it is inspired that whether the duty to warn of UAV-GC 2005 can be “substituted” by the early warning of NEC3 ECC, so as to improve problem solving on Dutch Design and build construction projects. Nevertheless, the NEC3 ECC contract has not been extensively applied in the Dutch construction industry, so that it is both legally and culturally alien to the “Dutch approach”. Therefore, problem in this respect is twofold, which is the deficiencies of the duty to warn of UAV-GC 2005 on one hand while the unfamiliarity of the early warning of NEC3 ECC to the Dutch construction industry on the other. Accordingly, the primary research objective of this dissertation is to investigate the deficiencies of duty to warn of UAV-GC 2005 and the added value of early warning of NEC3 ECC in terms of facilitating construction problem solving between the employer and the contractor. The secondary objective is to probe into the requirements for early warning to function with its genuine intention, from both contractual and cultural perspectives...