Province of Quebec (Canada) is in the process of implementing integrated project delivery (IPD) in its procurement process for public infrastructure to more effectively and efficiently achieve functional, environmental, and economic objectives. This paper analyzes the procurement legislation, regulations, and context of three jurisdictions through a comparative law approach and under the light of Macneil’s relational contract theory. It is found that Quebec’s procurement process has transactional features that should be counterbalanced, in the context of IPD implementation, by focusing on relational values, whether at the macro or personal level. These relational mechanisms should help legislators and public bodies establishing and operationalizing a viable and relational context of professional services and construction works procurement for IPD projects.

The Province of Quebec is currently in the process of adopting building information modeling (BIM) for major infrastructure projects. However, legal and contractual concerns such as the tendering process, adjudication criteria, intellectual property and risk–reward sharing mechanisms hinder the implementation of an efficient BIM process. This paper addresses the following question: How do norms, whether legislative, regulatory or contractual, functionally or dysfunctionally affect the effective implementation of BIM in Quebec’s public infrastructure framework? This paper suggests that the use of Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) should help mitigate legal barriers hindering BIM implementation, while preserving balance between fairness and encouraging collaboration. Quebec’s normative framework, which includes legislation, regulations, contracts and infra-regulatory rules, should be modified to standardize collaborative mechanisms, integrate two-stage negotiated processes such as rank-and-run or best and final offer and enable the assessment of tenderers’ objective qualities and more subjective qualities. Furthermore, a risk–reward sharing mechanism should be implemented through target costing, and upstream participation from a wide range of stakeholders should be encouraged.

The province of Quebec, Canada, seeks to implement relational alternate project delivery methods to achieve sustainability and energy efficiency in public construction. However, the relational differences between the formal written parts of different delivery methods have yet to be analyzed and understood, as is the case with the relational aspects of contracts and the achievement of sustainable and energy-efficient infrastructure. Using a hermeneutic interpretation of Macneil’s relational contract norms and grounded theory, 26 contracts involving Quebec’s largest public client of vertical infrastructure and representing three different types of project delivery methods (design–bid–build (DBB), design–Build (DB), and construction manager–general contractor/integrated project delivery (CMGC/IPD)) were analyzed using NVivo. It was found that CMGC/IPD is the most relational project delivery method available to Quebec’s public clients, namely because of the public client’s active involvement in the realization process, the increasing complexity of roles, the multitude of common management structures, and the internalization of sustainability measures and conflict resolution. Furthermore, Quebec’s CMGC/IPD was found to be an IPD-ish delivery method, lacking the early involvement of the construction manager and the risk/reward sharing mechanisms necessary to achieve pure IPD status. The findings and theoretical considerations discussed here will help policymakers, contract drafters, and public clients interested in implementing relational contracting practices in public construction projects.

A best practice tool to enhance design-build best-value procurements are stipends, yet there is very little literature dedicated to this topic. Cited benefits of stipends include incentivizing the level of effort put forth by proposers in preparing their technical proposal, encouraging the number of proposers and thereby increasing competition, and mitigating risk. This paper presents cross-validated findings from literature, agency policies, survey of 53 US design-build projects, six agency representative interviews, and thirteen design-build industry professional interviews. This paper investigates four aspects of stipends: (1) stipend value and calculation processes; (2) impact on a contractor's decision to propose; (3) impact of stipend amount on an offeror's proposal development, and (4) stipends' ability to aid agencies in achieving best value for highway construction projects. All sources agree that stipends are a necessary process to achieve best value as they increase competition and often can increase the quality of a proposal based on the stipend amount. Stipends typically cover one-third to one-half of a contractor's proposal costs. Agencies should use stipends when proposal costs are expected to be high and should estimate the stipend amount on a project-by-project basis. Properly valued stipends demonstrate that an agency is serious about going forward with the project, understands the work required,

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