The Process of Partnering; Gluing Contracts, Organising and Financing together

This paper discusses management of partnering projects where construction companies and clients cooperate in developing buildings and services. Taking a practice based theory and political process approach, partnering is seen as an example of a complex project operation, characterised by processual interactions between an emergent conceptual frame and the project's operational activities. Drawing on two case studies, it is analyzed how the governance frame of partnering projects is constituted by a combination of partnering elements, traditional contracts and financial arrangements. On the operational level these elements is continuously mobilized, negotiated and stabilized in their intersection with the practices and skill basis for the project. It is thus shown how incentives becomes especially problematic for the architects due to tensions between new and old contractual forms, and that project management levels are more successful in one case in mediating between operations and governance frames than in the other The research imply that the governance frame and the operations of the projects are mutually interacting throughout the projects, in contrast to the traditional sequential phase breakdown structure as often assumed in the partnering literature. The contradictory governance becomes a recurrent barrier for project operation management; forcing project participants to develop new sets of skills in dealing with partnering. In doing so they enter in an emergent process of developing the partnering practices on top of existing practices and institutions.