Competing relationships and a lack of collaboration are common in the construction industry. Consequently many reasons, such as lack of trust, unfair risk sharing and ineffective communication are highlighted by actors as challenges in the construction sector. Collaboration has been demonstrated as a solution for these challenges for the construction industry. However, collaborative environments are still far from effective in emerging economies with a lack of research and information available for such countries. We have used the Kurdistan region of Iraq to investigate and explore these challenges using systematic enquiry, utilising quantitative and qualitative methods. This article aims to explore these challenges, by reviewing past literature and investigating construction practices to better quantify those factors that underlie collaboration. A comprehensive review of the literature was conducted to identify the most critical factors. Then, a questionnaire was used to survey the opinions of practitioners, analysed through Exploratory Factor Analysis. Six factors were identified: project vision, participant behaviour, communication, relationship definition, contractual agreements and systematic process. Additionally, the paper provides suggestions as to how industry might apply such factors. This article contributes to a scarce literature regarding construction projects in Kurdistan region and emerging economies in general. Keywords -Collaboration, critical factors, construction, project management, factor analysis, emerging economies, Kurdistan, Iraq. overruns, win-lose culture and adversarial relations (Chan et al. 2004). To overcome the issues of TCM, PM has been used. PM models try to control cost, time and quality in a project-based system to achieve client needs; however, this approach also has faced many difficulties (Shen and Wu 2005).After an investigation to solve the problem of fragmentation and underperformance in the UK construction industry (Latham 1994), partnering was suggested as a solution to replace traditional methods of project delivery. Partnering delivered better results than traditional approaches to project management. However, relationships in partnering still need to be improved to overcome the underperformance of construction industry projects (Meng 2012).Many authors have insisted that the construction industry needs to improve collaboration and to adopt new ways of working to remain competitive and meet the expectations of increasingly demanding clients (Shelbourn et al. 2007;Cao et al. 2015;Morrell 2015).While problems of fragmentation and lack of collaboration in construction exist globally, the case is more severe in developing economies, where the construction sector is more fragmented. Additional problems confront construction projects in these countries, compared to developed economies, which include social, cultural, organisational, economic and process-related obstacles (Ofori 2000;Elkhalifa 2016;Haron et al. 2017). This observation is apparent in the Kurdistan region of I...

PurposeThe construction industry is a primary contributor to the development of emerging economies such as the Kurdistan Region of Iraq. However, the sector is underperforming, and products are not meeting expectations. A lack of collaboration is considered a significant contributor to these issues. Various researchers have identified factors to improve collaborative approaches. However, there is still a lack of clear frameworks to help implement collaboration in the construction industry, especially in emerging economies. Therefore, this study aims to develop a framework to implement collaboration in the construction industry.Design/methodology/approachThis article utilises a review of literature, questionnaire and interviews with experts in the construction industry in order to develop a framework to achieve collaboration in construction projects.FindingsThe research presents a framework that distributes the factors of collaboration over the project lifecycle stages in accordance with the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) Plan of Work 2007. Each factor is divided into a set of enabling conditions which must be satisfied to ensure that the given specific factors are delivered. Additionally, the framework suggests appointing a collaboration champion at the beginning of the project to manage the process.Originality/valueThe research contributes to scarce literature about collaboration practices in the Kurdistan Region and in emerging economies in general.

The construction sector is criticised for being fragmented and for having a large number of problems between stakeholders such as adversarial relationships, lack of trust and ineffective communication. These issues emerge especially in developing countries. Collaboration has been introduced as a solution to such issues. However, delivering an effective process of collaboration is a challenge with a wide range of factors involved. This paper identifies and sorts the critical factors that affect collaboration in the construction sector and recommends ways to adapt such factors in the sector. Through a comprehensive review of the literature, two groups of critical success factors have been identified to improve such practices, hard factors and soft factors. This study contributes to the scarce literature about collaboration in the construction industry in the Kurdistan, and identifies factors of collaboration that construction projects need to adopt in order to improve their performance.