Complex industrial projects increasingly require the contribution of a number of contractors, coordinated by the owner. Due to the imbrication of those contributions, strictly and solely focusing on the application of bilateral owner-contractor contractual terms is not generally conducive to successful delivery and can generate substantial disputes and delays. A number of models have been tested globally to address this issue. Our new White Paper 2024-08 ‘Effectively Delivering Complex Industrial Projects: Advantages and Drawbacks of Various Approaches for Owner – Contractors Collaboration, and Key Success Factors’ exposes what are those models and their advantages and drawbacks.

Large complex industrial projects increasingly require collaboration between owner and contractors to be successful by managing interfaces successfully. A number of contractual setups have been used over time, some being more adapted to certain situations. However they have had various success.

In the White Paper, the following setups are discussed in detail in terms of advantages and drawbacks:

• One-to-one contractual setups with incentivisation on project overall result
• Owner fostering the creation of a JV of contractors with the task of coordination delegated to the JV
• Forms of contract requiring the availability of a dispute board with independent assessors
• Collaboration agreement between all parties involved in the project, focused and including incentives based on collective project success, on top of more conventional one-to-one contracts focusing on individual performance
• Alliances (in particular in UK and Australia) whereby the owner and the contractors work together as a single integrated entity

In reality, success will depend more on softer aspects related to personal emotional engagement of contributors to the project. An early engagement at the right levels of all organisations involved, through structured integrated team and governance approaches, as well as a longer term view on the benefits of collaboration, are key success factors to be investing in from the onset of the project.

Read our new White Paper 2024-08 ‘Effectively Delivering Complex Industrial Projects: Advantages and Drawbacks of Various Approaches for Owner – Contractors Collaboration, and Key Success Factors’ to understand better which setup is more suited to your project, and how to implement it in the most effective manner.

If you can’t access the link to the white paper, copy and paste the following link in your browser: https://www.projectvaluedelivery.com/_library/2024-08_effective_owner_contractor_collab_v1.pdf