Partnering

Revision as of 19:56, 12 June 2017

Partnering is a form of collaboration management concept within the construction industry, in which the client, engineer, architecture and entrepreneur enter into a partnership based on dialogue, trust and shared responsibility. Partnering was established in the early 1980s in USA where a full partnership relation between the oil company Shell and the engineering firms Parson & SIP was established and has recently gained ground in the construction industry, as a well-known collaboration between key project stakeholders.

Partnering is part of the development in the construction industry, which is trying to catch up with the manufacturing industry by changing the low productivity development. In partnering, a main focus is for the participants to share the same values and thereby obtain a better starting point for the construction processes and thus a better result, which will be a success for all partners.

History

The basic principle of partnering was already present in the 1920s in Britain, a partnering relationship between Bevis-Marks & Spencer, but the term partnering is considered established in the beginning of the 1980s in the United States of America.

The litigation in the construction industry exploded in the early 1980s in USA, so the industry started to work with some basic management principles to deal with the organizational conflicts and the first full partnering relationship was established between the oil company Shell and the engineering firms Parson & SIP. However, the partnering model as it is known today was first developed and introduced by the US Corps of Army Engineers in the late 1980s, as a concept of the Japanese management tool Total Quality Management (TQM). The purpose of the new founded concept was to improve productivity and efficiency in the construction industry. The first projects showed a clear improvement of the efficiency throughout the entire construction process and even reduced the costs.

In the 1990s, the English government started to do some new initiatives in the construction sector to reduce the rising cost development, including conflict management. The results of partnering has been recognized all over the world the recent years and the experience shows that the construction projects often can be built faster and cheaper with a better final result.

The Danish government has because of the results of partnering ordered the governmental clients to carry out a systematic assessment prior of any construction project, to evaluate whether partnering it beneficial in the specific case or not.

Partnering

In partnering, a collaborative partnership is established in which counteraction and distrust is replaced with fellowship and trust through an early involvement of all partners. All expectations are attuned before the project starts, allowing an opportunity of the right decision making from the beginning.

Partnering consists as a minimum of a client, an engineer/architect and an entrepreneur, but can also include investors, the government etc. The partners work together to find their common goals and how to achieve them. By exploiting partnering and incorporation of each one’s competencies and experiences, the productivity development can be increased, the poor quality of the projects can be changed to the better and the many disputes and accidents in the construction industry can be avoided.

Partnering is a philosophy of teamwork and understanding the other partners needs and the construction management concept has shown to lower the costs and achieve a better end-result by sharing the risks.

First Generation Partnering

First generation partnering is also known as project partnering, where this form of collaboration is used to address a given project, after which the collaboration ends.

The basic approach produces a range of benefits and experiences, which can be achieved on individual projects and afterwards used in other projects. It is achieved through sharing common project goals, open decision processes and agreeing on dispute resolution principles. First generation partnering helps the companies and employees try one’s skill on it and explore the opportunities for a more effective collaboration with other companies. First generation partnering has shown to have a cost reduction of 5-30% and a time reduction of up to 40%.

First generation partnering is thus an essential step and experience base for all companies who want a solid basis for collaboration towards second- and third generation partnering, but is also considered to limit potential results if the collaboration is not continued. The limited repetition efficacy will reduce the effect of the results, since it takes time and experience to build a good and strong collaboration with great trust among the partners.

Second Generation Partnering

Second generation partnering is known as strategic partnering, where this form of collaboration is adding a long-term strategy to a series of projects undertaken for one customer. Second generation partnering complies with the problems of the first generation partnering, where collaboration is not repeated and therefore prevent a more fully optimization of the construction industry.

Second generation partnering begins with a strategic decision to a collaboration between partners in an ongoing series of projects. The strategic collaboration focuses on common values and mutual respect, through which continuous improvement of the efficiency of all the construction processes can be seen. Second generation partnering can be described by The Seven Pillars of Partnering, where each is a set of management actions that put this strategic partnering into effect. The Seven Pillars of Partnering are:

• Strategy – developing the client’s objectives and how consultants, contractors and specialists can meet them on the basis of feedback.
• Membership – identifying the firms that need to be involved to ensure all necessary skills are developed and available.
• Equity – ensuring everyone is rewarded for their work on the basis of fair prices and fair profits.
• Integration – improving the way the firms who are involved work together by using collaboration and building trust.
• Benchmarks – setting measured targets that lead to continuous improvements in performance from project to project.
• Project Processes – establishing standards and procedures that embody best practice based on process engineering.
• Feedback – capturing lessons from projects and task forces to guide the development of strategy.

Second generation partnering are resulting in better projects and helps the companies adapt new technologies and changes, through continuous collaboration and experience sharing. Second generation partnering has shown to have a cost reduction of up to 40% and a time reduction of up to 50%.

Third Generation Partnering

Third generation partnering is also known as strategic partnering, where this form of collaboration is a systematic repetition of the collaboration between the involved partners. The main difference between second- and third generations partnering is seen in the role of the client. The client has a dominant position in second generation partnering, whereas the client is considered to be a ‘costumer’.

The key features of third generation partnering are seen trough the overall aim of a long-term continuous improvement in performance that both justify and deliver high levels of profits. Third generation partnering consist of two different main forms – permanent supply teams and supply teams as ‘resource stocks’.

The permanent supply teams are typically specialized in a particular type of construction part/process or a particular market segment, where the continuous collaboration of the same type of product makes it standardized and creates opportunities of a much more efficiency increase in the construction industry. Unlike the permanent supply teams, the supply teams as resource stocks has a much better product selection, which also requires that more companies with the needed competences are involved for the chosen market area.

Third generation partnering are achieving even better results by a systematic repetition, that makes the product more standardized and thereby more efficient. Third generation partnering has shown to have a cost reduction of up to 50% and a time reduction of up to 80%.

Core Values

References

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