Partnering and integrated supply management

Developments in the construction industry, with a lack of productivity increases compared to manufacturing industry in general, have amongst other things led to the use of Partnering, which is a form of collaboration which attempts to counteract the distrust and the sub-optimisation which are common among the actors in the building industry. Partnering is still in its early stages, and a strategic development of the concept to include long-term collaborative relationships appears to be able to offer considerable potential, while there is a pressing need for the development of methods for strategic management of collaborative relationships on a line with the purchasing perspectives offered by Supply Chain Management. Based on a study of the literature and an in-depth case study carried out within a large Scandinavian contractor, this article gives a proposal for how Partnering can be supported by strategic purchasing, with the aim of achieving strategic Partnering. The contribution of this article is thus the development of a new purchasing perspective within Construction Supply Chain Management.