Contracting for Collaboration in Construction

Abstract

Construction contracts represent instruments that bind project participants together to deliver a project. The industry still uses delivery methods and related contracts that are more traditional in nature, e.g., design-bid-build (DBB), and promote a sequential design and construction process, which allows for little to no collaboration between project participants. Over the past 25 years, more collaborative delivery methods (e.g., Design-Build) have gained more adopters, and been touted as the solution to problems of the construction industry. The promotion of more collaborative environments stands front and center as a solution to the industry problems by promoting, via contractual terms, collaborative behaviors and processes. This study investigates the language of construction contracts by identifying keywords commonly associated with collaboration and comparing the incidence of these keywords in contracts for different delivery methods. Results indicate that DBB contracts have few to no mentions of collaborative words, standing to no surprise that DBB environments are less collaborative in nature. In contrast, Integrated Project Delivery contracts not only use keywords associated with collaboration, but actually employ them in clauses to promote collaborative behaviors and environments.

Project Delivery Contract Language, Schedules, and Collaboration

“…This will set the tone in terms of how much collaboration will happen between the parties involved from the start of the project. Moreover, DB contracts usually spell out specific methods to support schedule collaboration (Willis and Alves 2019).…”

“…The form is used by different delivery methods to organize project stakeholders, define their rights and responsibilities, impact how parties work together, and determine whether they are more or less collaborative, ultimately impacting project performance (El Asmar et al 2013). Previous research has shown that the language in contracts tends to be more prescriptive, transactional, and devoid of words that allude to collaboration and related practices in more traditional delivery methods that use dyadic contracts, whereas the language is more relational and collaborative in delivery methods with multi-party contracts (Willis and Alves 2019).…”

Lean Integrated Project Delivery for Construction Procurement: The Case of Sri Lanka

“…Moreover, in the design and build procurement method, a single entity performs the duty of design, but the involvement of the employer is inferior [40]. Therefore, lean design is a significant departure from conventional project delivery methods [37], as the design is produced because of the involvement of all team members [41]. Therefore, the best design output can be expected from the LIPD method [33].…”

“…Conflicts and disputes [65] Constructability issues [20] Over budgeting [15] Time-consuming [15] Many change orders [41] Lack of transparency [9] Low level of efficiency [19] Low level of productivity [19] Price fluctuation issues Not referred…”

A Scenario-Based Model for the Study of Collaboration in Construction

“…Thus, divergent interpretations of the constituents of collaboration become evident in the decision-making process, where stakeholders vary their intent and degree of involvement. Willis and Alves (2019) argued that collaboration keywords in contracts would promote collaborative behaviors in practice. They showed that Design-Build (DB) and Integrated Project Delivery (IPD) contracts have far more collaborative language than traditional Design-Bid-Build (DBB) contracts.…”