Partnering

As an initiative of the CIC Industry Improvement Committee, a Task Force was convened with the objective of building on the recommendations of the Latham report Constructing the Team and producing guidance on integrated working for members and the industry and its clients generally. The outcome in June 2000, under the chairmanship of John Wright, was A Guide to Project Team Partnering. Always intended as a dynamic document for continuous improvement, two years later in 2002, the Partnering Task Force produced a second edition incorporating feedback from user’s experience.

During its work on the second edition the group identified a need for guidance on selecting the partnering team and also on how to run partnering workshops. It set to work producing companion guides on these two topics, which are due for publication shortly.

An extract from the introduction to the main guide follows to give a flavour of what the publication contains:

“Why choose Partnering?

For too long the construction industry has been divided by factionalism and conflict, which has contributed to poor performance, dangerously low profit margins and poor morale among consultants, constructors and suppliers. Understandably, clients in both the public and the private sectors have become increasingly dissatisfied. What they see is unpredictability and under-performance. What they receive is too often of poor quality, late and overpriced, provided by a process seldom offering best value.

Much had been done and much more is being done to address these major issues facing the construction industry. In 1998 the Construction Task Force set up by the Government published its report Rethinking Construction. This gave birth to the Movement for Innovation (M4I) and a pool of demonstration projects, which in the new spirit of openness, provide a bank of knowledge on good practice and innovation. The Government has followed this up with its own guidance documents produced by the Treasury.

The Construction Industry Council enthusiastically supports these initiatives and the new thinking and cultural change they are helping to engender in clients, consultants, constructors, specialist contractors and suppliers.

At the heart of Rethinking Construction is the conviction that an integrated project process will deliver the best value to the client and user. The process must however embrace the combined talents of the full project team as early as possible. The team must be in place from concept to completion and be wholly focused on the needs of the client and users.

Central to this integrated process is project team partnering – a structured management approach to facilitate working together. The project partnering team must include the client together with consultants, constructor/construction manager, key specialists, and key suppliers. The team members form a ‘virtual company’, acting co-operatively and making decisions in a blame-free environment of trust. This will raise the collective performance and aid more effective working, with the focus firmly on agreed common goals. Underpinning the successful project partnering team will be openness, clearly articulated mutual objectives, a problem resolving structure, a commitment to continuous improvement - measured against Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) - and a mechanism to manage the risks and fairly share the rewards.”

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