Transition in Adopting Project Delivery Method with Early Contractor Involvement

Abstract

Recently asset owners have been investigating alternative delivery models for construction projects that offer improvements in value for money and project delivery time. One of these methods is the early contractor involvement (ECI) strategy. In this strategy a contractor is engaged before commencement of the construction work to give input during design. After the design, the construction work is negotiated with the contractor. Implementation of this new delivery strategy can raise issues with involved parties in the industry. To find these transitional issues, expectations and opinions were collected from practitioners from the three involved parties—owners, designers, and contractors—who had experience with ECI. The results show that all parties agreed in expecting improvements in quality and innovation and that the costs needed to adopt this system were not significant. Owners and contractors opined that the design phase could be expedited; however, the designers argued that any time savings were negated by increased collaboration and negotiation between the parties. There was also disagreement on risk allocation during construction. Contrary to the other parties, the contractors did not perceive the allocation of risk to them to be greater than with traditional procurement systems. Finally there was disagreement about whether the necessary collaborative culture was present in the construction industry for adopting “open book” costing, often practiced in ECI. It is recommended that for successful implementation of ECI, objectives in the areas of disagreement should be clarified between parties as they work through a transitional phase in adopting the ECI procurement method.

Early contractor involvement approaches in public project procurement

“…In the ECI approach that is practiced in the UK and Australia, however, the owner holds a single contract with the contractor. This latter type of ECI resembles alliancing during the design phase and designbuild (DB) contract during the project execution phase (Scheepbouwer and Humphries, 2011).…”

“…The main ambition of ECI is typically understood to be bringing construction knowledge and experience into the pre-construction phases of projects. Of particular interest is the improvement in value for money and project delivery time in comparison to traditional project delivery methods (Scheepbouwer and Humphries, 2011).…”

Construction engineering management culture shift: Is the lowest tender offer dead?

“…Much research has been conducted regarding the impact on cost, schedule, and quality in the adversarial environment induced by LTO awards. In most cases, researchers have found benefits attributable to moving to some form of best value (BV) award system for typical transportation projects (Ellis et al, 1991;Songer et al, 1994;Crowley and Hancher, 1995;Gransberg and Ellicott, 1997;Molenaar and Gransberg, 2001;Higbee, 2004;Federal Highway Administration (FHWA), 2006;Scott et al, 2006;Blanchard, 2007;Scheepbouwer and Humphries, 2011;West et al, 2012;Rueda-Benavides and Gransberg, 2014;Tran et al, 2016). NCHRP Report 561 (Scott et al 2006) synthesized the BV concepts found in US state and federal statutes.…”

Early Contractor Involvement (ECI) in Event Planning and Management

“…Clients also find competition and trust as challenges they might face in adapting an ECI contracting model (Bundgaard et al, 2011). Scheepbouwer and Humphries (2011) examine ECI against the transitional projects issues and assert that disagreement over risk allocation, time constraints and cost reimbursement as well as level of staff capability and input, are issues in implementing ECI project delivery for all committed parties that should be adequately addressed.…”