Developing Capabilities for Public Construction Clients

Abstract

Clients in the public sector face a large number of challenges in designing, procuring and managing major construction projects in a manner that is conducive to the organization's overall goals. The role of the client in bringing about successful project completion has more recently been emphasized with a growing number of studies focusing on developing dynamic client capabilities that facilitate the handling of a project through all of its different phases.Though the capabilities of the client carries immense importance in all construction projects, the importance is further exacerbated by the sheer scale of the projects involved in major construction projects, a development which has prompted governmental agencies to inquire into ways to improve processes in the client organization.To address such inquiries, this paper which is based on a literature review, explores the types of dynamic capabilities that emerge with respect to public construction clients and in particular, if and how a specific client capability influences a specific project outcome. The mapping of capabilities constitutes a theoretical foundation for a forthcoming empirical study on the same topic.