Introducing Partnering in Denmark – Lessons Learned Applying Public Private Partnerships as an Innovation Platform

The purpose of this paper is to review practical experiences using public private partnership as an innovation platform in the construction sector. There is a growing attention to the importance of construction innovation as a means to securing the quality of the built environment as well as sustainability and economic welfare and prosperity in society. One approach to increasing the focus and rate of innovation processes is to facilitate closer interaction between at public and private companies targeting new thinking and innovation. This strategy characterises a Plan of Action, published by the Danish Government (autumn 1998), defining ideas for changes in the building sector. The background to this initiative was stagnating productivity in combination with an unacceptable high level of defects and conflicts in construction projects. As a specific target was to develop new forms of collaboration in project coalitions a programme aimed at this overall goal was launched early 1999, and work soon focused on partnering. In dialogue with the industry a joint understanding of partnering was evolved, based on the key words dialogue, trust, openness and early involvement of all project partners. Furthermore it was decided to anchor the development work in a public private partnership, in which the state as client should collaborate with private architects, engineers, contractors and suppliers. The guidelines for this partnership interaction were prepared in accordance with the long Danish tradition for state subsidized experimental building projects. In this paper the progress and outcome of the PPP development programme are revised. Four main stages in the development process are identified and specified: 1) transforming the idea into a proposal 2)organising the partnership 3)framing the development work and 4)dissemination and implementation. Lessons learned through the experimental cases are discussed, and the applicability of PPP as an approach to innovation in construction is evaluated. Keywords: public private partnership, partnering, experimental projects, innovation process