In dit artikel trekken wij lessen uit de opzet en contractuele en relationele sturing van een integrale gebiedstransformatie. We onderzochten of en hoe er bij de aanpak van een dergelijke grote maatschappelijke uitdaging (‘grand challenge’) in de gebouwde omgeving rekening gehouden wordt met complexiteit en onzekerheid. Ons onderzoek toont het belang aan van een integrale programmatische aanpak, waarin verschillende beleidsvraagstukken, actoren en middelen worden samengebracht om gemeenschappelijke doelstellingen te behalen. Om meer waardecreatie te realiseren moet de aanpak de complexiteit van de opgave onderkennen. Daarvoor zijn gezamenlijke visievorming tussen partners, aandacht voor verschillende waarden en belangen, en overkoepelende sturing op deelinspanningen noodzakelijk. Onder financiële druk kan gemakkelijk de behoefte ontstaan om complexiteit te reduceren, en meer controle en beheersing te introduceren door te focussen op individuele deelprojecten via strikt contractuele sturing. Dat dient echter het gezamenlijke doel niet. Naast contractuele sturing is voor succes relationele flexibiliteit nodig om onzekere omstandigheden in de toekomst het hoofd te kunnen bieden. Publieke opdrachtgevers moeten meer aandacht hebben voor sturing op samenhang en integraliteit, het onderlinge vertrouwen tussen partners, het gezamenlijk oplossen van problemen en conflictmanagement.

Purpose-oriented collaborative networks are a potential effective inter-organisational form to define and implement solutions for grand challenges in the construction industry. The governance of such networks must be designed ex-ante and adapted over time by considering the nature of grand challenges around which they are set up. Currently, there is limited understanding of the governance requirements resulting from different analytical dimensions of grand challenges. This study identifies these requirements through a review of grand challenge, wicked problem, and network governance literature. Based on the examination of three grand challenge characteristics (i.e., dynamic complexity, knowledge uncertainty and conflict), we present an overview of requirements across five governance dimensions (i.e., goalsetting, capability building, coordination, roles and decision-making, and monitoring and evaluation). This overview can be used to: (i) guide the formation and implementation of collaborative networks; (ii) explore to what extent the governance structure and processes of existing networks are organised from a problem-based perspective.

Ondanks het grote aantal repetitieve, kleine activiteiten dat wordt uitgevoerd voor publieke opdrachtgevers, ontbreekt het zowel in de praktijk als in de wetenschappelijke literatuur aan inzicht in de succesfactoren van dit type opgaven. Dit beperkt de mogelijkheden tot het doorvoeren van relevante verbeteringen ten aanzien van de samenwerking en de eigen rol van de publieke en private organisaties hierin. Dit onderzoek heeft zich daarom gericht op de samenwerking van waterschappen en marktpartijen specifiek bij kleinschalige repetitieve werkzaamheden.
Het onderzoek bestaat uit de analyse van portfolio's van waterschappen en interviews met zowel waterschapsmedewerkers als marktpartijen.

Uit de analyse van inkooporders blijkt dat repetitive werkzaamheden kunnen worden onderverdeeld in vijf typen, waarvan werkzaamheden aan watergangen de meest voorkomende zijn. Het inzicht in deze activiteiten en hun financiële omvang is van cruciaal belang voor optimalisatie.

Het onderzoek identificeert de elementen in de samenwerking tussen waterschappen en marktpartijen die bijdragen aan efficiëntere uitvoering van repetitive werkzaamheden: inzicht in de markt, bundeling door opdrachtgever(s) in relatie tot ondernemerschap bij de opdrachtnemer(s), communicatie, lerend vermogen, en formele en informele contractmanagement.

Dit onderzoek draagt bij aan het optimaliseren van de samenwerking tussen waterschappen en marktpartijen in repetitive werkzaamheden, wat leidt tot efficiëntere en effectievere uitvoering van deze taken in de waterbouwsector.

Complex project networks confront project actors, with value pluralism originating from a plethora of competing organizational and institutional systems related to the project environment. Using a single urban redevelopment case study, we present a dynamic understanding of the emergence and nature of conflicts in different conflict arenas of collaborative project networks. We identify seven coping patterns to reduce and engage with this complexity in the process of delivering value throughout projects. The coping patterns enable a more dynamic and flexible approach toward conflict management in project networks with a high degree of conflicting project interests.

Although a considerable amount of literature has addressed the public procurement in the construction industry, still little is known about procurement in small and repetitive activities. In practice, however, public clients are often involved in repetitive tasks such as maintenance activities. Dutch water boards, regional governmental bodies responsible for providing water management services, are the focus of this study. For this research, three main procurement documents of the water boards were performed using content analysis. The aim is to evaluate these documents and to identify the typology of the repetitive activities and the procurement volume of these tasks from a portfolio perspective of the public client. Most of the contractors/suppliers involved in these activities are local Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises (SMEs). The findings of the study indicate that insights into the typologies of these repetitive works and their expected volume over time delivers crucial value for the public procurer. Given the amount of repetitive works procured by public clients, creating such an insight to both clients as well as contractors can ultimately increase efficiency and improve investment opportunities.

In the construction industry, public and semi-public clients increasingly depend on private parties to achieve project outcomes by adopting network type of governance approaches. However, social-political responsibilities remain at the public side. Hence, the general challenge for public commissioners is to find a new balance between dependency and responsibility when safeguarding competing traditional and network values. Based on three qualitative studies of a PhD project on safeguarding public values by public construction clients, applying concepts from public administration and public value theory, this paper presents three lessons learnt on future roles and responsibilities. We argue that future 'good' commissioning should be 1) more about embedding new value systems and less about changing existing values mechanisms, 2) more about paradox thinking in a convener role and less about trade-offs in a steering role and, 3) more about informal accountability in the value chain and less about formal accountability in the project chain. To ensure the 'right' kind of interference in the value process, public clients' way of coping with publicprivate conflicts, needs to correspond with the internal governance arrangements, and vice versa. Further research should focus on facilitating this alignment by providing a public value safeguarding strategy tool for public construction clients.

A project's autonomy, the degree to which a project can evolve without constant interference from the parent organization, is a key feature of innovation projects. The literature treats autonomy as a passive phenomenon and underestimates how projects as temporary organizations interact with more permanent forms of organizations. A dynamic and contextually sensitive understanding of project autonomy is valuable; autonomy can change over the course of the project's lifecycle and evolve into extreme isolation. We show how autonomy is shaped through practices of isolation and how this influences project outcomes. Two innovation projects were studied through qualitative\055interpretive methods and we analyzed symbolic, discursive and spatial practices of isolation. These practices facilitate the exploration of innovations but limit the transmission of these innovations to the parent organization. We contribute to the literature on temporary organizations and project-to-parent integration by illustrating and theorizing the role of practices of isolation in this process.

Municipalities account for a considerable share in the total production of construction work in the Netherlands. Through their commissioning role, public entities can act as a ‘launching customer’ for innovation. New procurement schemes have been and are being installed to improve quality and productivity, reduce risks and enhance sustainability within the industry. The effective application of these schemes requires a professional commissioning organisation, able to consistently adopt and further develop these new schemes. A clear organisational structure and aligned working processes are prerequisite to establish efficiency, effectivity, knowledge management and organisational learning. A qualitative research project investigated the governance structure and embedding of the commissioning role in Dutch municipalities. 18 municipalities were investigated through structured interviews and additional document analysis. The research elucidates the shattering of the commissioning role over the municipal organisation, with limited alignment of processes between entities involved and hybrid organisation structure and governance issued by municipalities show substantial variation and hybridity within the municipal
organisations. The allocation of administrative responsibility for complex is not
clear-cut, varying with the distribution of political responsibility for related policy
areas between various aldermen. Although differences exist between larger and
smaller municipalities, overall findings are similar. The fragmentation level found,
can be expected to hamper possibilities for organisational learning and improving
professionalism. To improve these possibilities, preconditions for knowledge
management and organisational learning should be strengthened, starting with
stimulating the awareness of the relevance of commissioning role.

Today’s societal challenges increasingly ask for collaborations of public, private and societal parties to achieve public goals though public service delivery projects. In these PPPs project managers have to align the interests of the permanent parent organization with the interests of the temporary project organization. Especially in urban area development projects a network of multiple internal and external actors creates a situation in which public construction client organizations must cope with different logics in, often conflicting, value systems. They are challenged to balance values related to their legal obligations, such as reliability and equity, and the increasingly important values related both product and process innovation. We use an in-depth case study to identify the main tensions that are present between the different logics of the public, private and societal organizations involved in the delivery of public goods and services in the supply chain of an urban area project. And identify different resources (administrative and otherwise) that are consciously or unconsciously deployed coper with value conflicts. The fieldwork was conducted between June 2017 and December 2018 and consisted of interviews, observations and document analysis. Using public value process mapping, we followed both top-down and bottom-up strategy alignment practices. Findings show that the particularly participatory context displays a mixture of three logics; 1) the logic of the public commissioning organization, 2) the logic of residents organized in a panel and 3) the business logics of local suppliers organized in a tender pool. We identified various collective or individual, formal or informal, or defensive or active strategic responses to these conflicting values systems. Results of the study will increase the awareness of project managers on steering public values within the public domain and can be used to explicate the pallet of safeguarding mechanisms that are applied in construction projects.

Today’s societal challenges increasingly ask for collaborations of public, private and societal parties to achieve public goals though public service delivery projects. Complex hybrid networks of multiple internal and external actors develop in which public organisations must cope with different logics in often conflicting value systems. In this paper we aim to improve our understanding of how multiple institutional logics can coexist within public commissioning organisations and how they are balanced. We look into how hybrid organisations select, prioritize and integrate plural institutional logics using different response strategies to organisational complexity. We use an in-depth case study to identify the main tensions that are present between the different value systems of the public, private and societal organisations involved in the delivery of public goods and services in the supply chain of an urban area project. And identify different resources (administrative and otherwise) that are consciously or unconsciously deployed coper with value conflicts. The fieldwork was conducted between June 2017 and May 2019 and consisted of interviews, observations and document analysis. Using public value process mapping, we followed the participatory procurement process ‘bottom-up’, connecting project objectives that are set on organisational level to project management practices and trace how public values are translated from public parties to private parties in the construction industry. Results indicate that responses to conflicting value systems were mostly individual and defensive. More informal ways of organising were only found as addition to the existing formal systems, preventing sustainable organisational maturing in handling the multi-level challenge of managing often conflicting policy goals. We should therefore expand our knowledge on combining ‘old’ and ‘new’ patterns of organisational governance in safeguarding public values.

Recently in the Netherlands collaboration emerged as the proposed best way of working together. Clients and contractors are promoting collaboration, and they also prescribe collaboration in their future visions on the construction sector. We challenge this automatism by which collaboration is chosen as the most effective and efficient way. We did an extensive qualitative literature review in order to answer the research question: how can public clients and private contractors work together effective and efficient? At first a definition of collaboration is constructed, and the characteristics of the public sector in the Netherlands are discussed along three themes: power, resources, and procurement. The definition of collaboration and public sector construction project characteristics are then compared to show how collaboration is not suitable for all projects, and other forms of working together are discussed.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to address the barriers that Dutch housing associations encounter in implementing new procurement strategies. Design/methodology/approach: Several aspects of purchasing, portfolio management, project delivery and supply management are discussed in relation to the changing role of housing associations as semi-public commissioning bodies in the Dutch construction industry, based on data derived from workshops with six Dutch housing associations. Findings: Housing associations are adapting their procurement strategy towards a more integrative and performance-based approach to supply management. Due to the complexity of implementing this process, housing associations struggle especially with moving beyond pilot projects, increasing the maturity levels throughout the organisation and aligning new policies with daily practices at a tactical and an operational level. Practical implications: Increased knowledge of change processes and seeing the potential of maturity models will be valuable for practitioners who are dealing with changes on the work floor. Social implications: Client organisations are considered one of the key drivers of change in the construction industry. Insights into these particular organisational change processes contribute to the potential of industry reform. Originality/value: Most studies on collaboration and integration in the supply chain focus on the inter-organisational level or on the supply side, rather than the internal organisation of the client.

De bouwsector is een projectensector: van woningbouw tot gebiedsontwikkeling, we organiseren onze activiteiten in projecten. Die projectstructuur blijkt – zowel in de praktijk als volgens de theorie – het structureel leren niet eenvoudig te maken. Voor vernieuwing in de bouwsector wordt leren echter als belangrijk en essentieel gezien. Enerzijds omdat zo het wiel niet steeds opnieuw wordt uitgevonden en er aandacht kan zijn voor innovatie. Anderzijds omdat het eenvoudigweg efficiënter werkt als je eerdere ervaringen mee kunt nemen. In deze handreiking kijken we naar hoe het leren in project georiënteerde organisaties in de bouw verbeterd kan worden. Dat is relevant voor publieke en semipublieke opdrachtgevers, zoals gemeenten, corporaties en waterschappen, maar zeker ook in het private domein, waaronder het bouwbedrijfsleven.

Deze publicatie is gebaseerd op eerder onderzoek van de TU Delft (prof.dr.ir. Marleen Hermans, ir. Lizet Kuitert, dr.ir. Leentje Volkert) en de VU Amsterdam (prof.dr. Alfons van Marrewijk, Thijs Willems (MSc)).

One way of achieving public value is by policy-delivery through exchanges of product, services and financing between individuals, companies, social institutions, and government. This way complex networks of multiple internal and external actors develop in which public organizations must cope with different logics in often conflicting value systems. Strategies to address trade-offs in the management of policy implementation are key to business optimization and of great relevance to safeguarding public value. In this paper we look into strategy alignment practices of a Dutch municipality that implement a new participatory procurement strategy to redevelop a city park in a multicultural neighborhood. Based on an ethnographic case study research we answer to the question: ‘How do public organizations balance the multiple institutional logics that belong to different public value regimes in safeguarding public service delivery in the built environment?’ Results indicate that there are many obstacles in sufficiently responding to conflicting value systems, originating from a misalignment in application of governance mechanisms. In an attempt to transition to a network type of governance, which is more sufficient for the delivery of public services in todays fragmented society and -public domain, elements of different governance mechanisms were applied at different decision-making levels. More informal ways of organising were only found as addition to the existing formal systems, preventing sustainable organizational maturing in handling the multi-level challenge of managing often conflicting policy goals. We should therefore expand our knowledge on combining ‘old’ and ‘new’ patterns of organizational governance in approaching public values.

Voor u ligt een handreiking om de professionaliteit van de opdrachtgevende rol in uw organisatie te bepalen en de gewenste ontwikkelingen hierin te bespreken. De handreiking is gebaseerd op het instrument ‘Maturity Model Professioneel Publiek Opdrachtgeven’ van de leerstoel Publiek Opdrachtgeverschap in de bouw aan de TU Delft. Het maturity model is in nauwe interactie met vertegenwoordigers uit (semi-)publieke1 organisaties ontwikkeld en ingebed in de wetenschap. Het maturity model stelt organisaties in staat intern een stand van zaken op te maken ten aanzien van het ontwikkelingsstadium van hun opdrachtgevende rol in de bouw: besteden zij aan alle voor opdrachtgeverschap relevante thema’s voldoende aandacht? Is er sprake van organisatiebrede professionalisering? Aan de hand van een lijst relevante aspecten beschouwen medewerkers van organisaties – van hoog tot laag en organisatiebreed – hun eigen organisatie. Zo ontstaat een gezamenlijk beeld van waar de organisatie op een bepaald moment en op een bepaald aspect staat, en hoe de organisatie zich, vanuit eigen gestelde doelen op dit vlak, verder kan ontwikkelen. Verschillende (semi-)publieke organisaties, waaronder een aantal corporaties, hebben inmiddels het maturity model toegepast. In deze publicatie delen wij hun gezamenlijke bevindingen. Er is een aantal ‘rode draden’ te ontdekken in de wijze waarop corporaties zich ontwikkelen bij de vernieuwing van hun opdrachtgevende rol. Door van elkaars ervaringen te leren, komt het (semi-) publieke domein verder. Deze publicatie hoopt daartoe inspiratie te bieden. Deze handreiking gaat in op professioneel opdrachtgeverschap, de inhoudelijke resultaten van het onderzoek naar de toepassing van het maturity model en doet aanbevelingen voor corporaties. Ook voor andere organisaties in het (semi-)publieke domein is de publicatie bruikbaar, omdat daar vergelijkbare ontwikkelingen zichtbaar zijn.

For financial and strategic reasons, public and semi-public construction clients increasingly depend on private parties to carry out public service delivery. They subcontract operational responsibilities to private parties while remaining socio-politically responsible for ensuring public values. Public administration literature mainly addresses the importance of procedural and performance values in safeguarding public values. However, safeguarding the quality of the built environment also requires a focus on product values. In this study, we aim to increase the understanding of the meaning and significance of public values in the daily practice of public construction clients and identify the challenges they face in commissioning these seemingly opposing values. A set of semi-structured interviews with the public administrators of a variety of public and semi-public construction client organizations in the Netherlands shows that both internal and external factors influence the collaborative practices between clients and contractors. This causes a value shift from an emphasis on procedural values to managing performance and product values, indicating that clients need to take on a wider view on public values. Six main public value dilemmas were found that complicate the task of developing an open, transparent and sustainable long-term client–contractor relationship. The current contractual system, however, lacks the flexibility to facilitate this product-based value view in construction.

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 collaboration, there are fewer possibilities to directly influence the outcomes of these processes. Socio-political responsibilities, however, remain with public parties, requiring other kinds of safeguarding mechanisms to come into play. In this paper we aim to explore how public construction clients try to find a balance in public value management activities by rethinking their roles and responsibilities in the context of an increasing value and volume of integrated service deliveries in construction. We present results of a set of semi-structured interviews with different actors playing a part in commissioning of organisations with different degrees of publicness. The results indicate that the alignment of the client role and change in responsibilities should be rather flexible in order to balance the potentially conflicting procedural obligations as a public organisation and creating room to steer on increasingly important values of sustainability, innovation and quality. It was shown that public agents need to adopt a more facilitating and frame-setting role and build sustainable relationships based on trust. And although they are dependent of private market parties to achieve certain new‘ values, their position as public client organisations actually enables them to take a forerunners‘ role. In order to facilitate the desired value shift roles and responsibilities need to be aligned with steering mechanisms. Further research could look more closely into the alignment of the role and responsibility change and organisational- and steering mechanisms that are flexible enough to deal with the restrictions that lawfulness brings along.

In the construction industry clients largely depend on contractors to deliver projects. According to agency theory problems of goal conflict and information asymmetry arise in this delegation of work because both the principal and the agent are self- interested. The control-oriented governance mechanisms that agency theorists propose as a means to resolve these problems can act counterproductive and give rise to new problems. Stewardship theory offers a counterweight to agency theory and assumes a relational reciprocity between the principal and the steward. Recently, a large group of Dutch public construction clients and contractors have collaboratively expressed their desire to improve their relationship in a manifest called ‘the market vision’. This phenomenon can be interpreted as a desire to shift from a principal- agent towards a principal-steward relationship. The aim of this paper is to explore how public clients engage in stewardship relationships with contractors. This research is based on a case study of one of the most ambitious projects under the umbrella of this market vision trajectory. The analysis of the documents, observation notes and semi-structured interviews with project team members indicate that they developed a relationship which can be characterised as a principal-steward bond. By investing in relationship-building from the pre-commercial phase, throughout the tender phase and the execution phase, they put their individual differences beside in order to reach their initially defined common goal. It remains however to be seen whether this can be considered as a complete stewardship relation.

Successfully sharing knowledge through interactions between projects and the organization is, especially in a situation of changing work processes, an important capability for organizations to learn. The aim of this study is to gain insights into the process of project-based learning, specifically by studying how project-based learning relates to project autonomy. Drawing on the data of two teams in collaborative projects, we found that in both projects symbolic, discursive, and spatial practices of isolation were developed that changed the relationship with the permanent organization. We show how these practices contributed to the project teams moving from operating autonomously – whilst still having their goals aligned with the organization – to operating in isolation from the permanent organization. The findings indicate that project autonomy is beneficial for explorative forms of project-based learning, but when turning into isolation project autonomy inhibits the dissemination of knowledge to the wider project-oriented environment.