Executive Summary

The research question

Clients choosing a specific category of relationship-based procurement (RBP) would benefit from a clearer definition of not only the characteristics of these forms of project procurement but also the knowledge, skills, attributes, and experience (KSAE) required of project managers delivering these projects. Several research questions naturally flow from this research problem:

Q1 – What are the fundamental characteristics of emerging relationship-based forms of project procurement?

Q2 – Do these forms vary in different parts of the world and, if so, in what way?

Q3 – What specific KSAEs that are required to deliver such projects are currently underdeveloped or missing from traditional project managers’ knowledge and skills sets?

Q4 – How may any identified gaps be bridged?

Context of the research

This research is undertaken within the context of the global construction industry sector. More specifically, it deals with a form of relationship-based project procurement and delivery for large-scale building and engineering infrastructure works. It undertakes analysis of data gathered from subject experts from Australia, the U.S., Hong Kong, the U.K. and several European countries.

Brief overview of the methodology

We adhere to the paradigm of project management (PM) and forms of project procurement being a socially constructed concept. These forms did not exist before people started to do what we describe as project work. We believe that PM and project procurement exists in the sense that we find it convenient to interpret activity we can observe. People do PM work when they transform an idea of some kind of beneficial change (such as creating a software tool to perform a set of functions, or building a new transport facility for people and goods to be moved around a city, or transforming a business's administration system to comply with certain needed standards) into a project output. The process of obtaining the required resources to perform this transformation is what we perceive the major role of a project procurement process. Our perspective of what we assumed to exist drives us to believe that PM and a procurement choice for a project owner representative (POR) exists as a social construct. Therefore, we argue that attempting to conceptualize the phenomenon of a project procurement system must be based on trying to understand the descriptions and stories of project managers engaged in a project procurement process. We view PM as a learning and transformational co-generated learning process.

We undertook a research approach of interviews with 50 subject matter experts, 14 of whom were academics and 36 were practitioners. We first reviewed the literature, both from a scanning the environment sense to gain an appreciation of the state of the art but to also hone in on particular case study work that could reveal additional insights that could inform our research. Often authors of case studies and other studies are obliged to edit out important insights to focus their paper for a particular audience. Additionally, authors may be able to reflect on their results as time has elapsed and current context changes since the materials and evidence were published. We initially relied primarily on the published literature and our reflection on our research to identify 14 subject matter experts (SMEs) who we could interview. We also reflected upon and re-examined several previous related research studies that we had completed. We interviewed a total of 36 subject matter experts from several countries. And our interviews were recorded and transcribed to provide over 500 pages of transcription that we analyzed using a grounded theory sensemaking approach with the aid of the NVivo10 tool. Findings were validated through a series of presentations to academics at international conferences in Australia, the U.K., the U.S., and in several European cities. We also presented findings for review and comment to two separate sets of subject matter experts from those we interviewed in the U.K. in October 2013, one at Oxford University in the U.K. and the other at the Cabinet Office Westminster, the U.K. Details of the methodology, the description of those interviewed and the validation process is contained in the monograph.

Brief Overview of the Findings and Application for Practice

We believe that the value that this monograph contributes to the PM literature can be summarized with reference to the monograph as follows:

• A substantial discussion and presentation in Chapter 2 of PM theory that underpins the study and linked it within a project procurement context;
• A substantial discussion and presentation in Chapter 3 of business theory aspects of RBP that sets the study in context and underpins the study within a project procurement context;
• A substantial discussion and presentation in Chapter 4 of human behavior aspects of RBP that sets the study in context and underpins the study within a project procurement context;
• Table 6 that updates and presents findings from our Alliancing Association of Australasia (AAA) study of profiling Alliance Manager Excellence. The table presents a model that incorporates feedback from practitioners that enthusiastically supported its applicability to both alliance managers and high performing project managers working on complex projects;
• Table 9 that presents a current definition of RBP forms as understood in a set of countries in the world. This provides a significant attempt to explain the terms and how the approaches are applied globally;
• Figure 25 that provides a model for categorizing collaboration forms linked to RBP terms, generally used globally together with Table 10, that explains the degree of relationship intensity characteristics to supplement the understanding that readers can gain from Figure 25;
• Figure 27, the Wittgenstein's Idea of Family Resemblance model that identifies 16 “petals” or elements that has been grouped into platform foundational, behavioral factors and processes, routines, and means drivers of RBP forms. This, together with Table 11, Table 12 and Table 13 explains in detail what each element and sub-element/theme means and how the element may be measured. This provides an RBP taxonomy visualization model that can be developed through a color-coded table (an example of this is presented in Table 14, with a sample analysis presented in Table 15) or a radar chart diagram for any given RBP configuration, as illustrated in Figure 28. This facilitates better understanding of each element's characteristics. KSAEs and benchmark standards can be determined by using the associated table in Appendix 2, enabling best use of each element's characteristics to deliver value through the project.

This contribution addresses the research aim to present a body of research work that helps people better understand the various emerging forms of RBP and how to identify what KSAE may be required for any particular RBP form.

The principal practical value delivered by this monograph includes presentation of a visualization tool for understanding forms of project procurement so that as they evolve over time and are interpreted across the world, a more explicit and clearer explanation of how they fit upon a relationship-based procurement continuum might be used. This should help academics, practitioners and policy makers become more confident that they are “speaking the same language.” The second main contribution made is the development of the relationship-based procurement taxonomy that is presented in Chapter 6 of Section 1 of the book and elaborated upon in Appendix two of Section 2.