Early contractor involvement approaches in public project procurement
Abstract
Purpose
Early contractor involvement (ECI) faces many barriers when it is implemented in public procurement, given that it is different from traditional business practices. Primarily, public owners face a major challenge, as they should treat all bidders equally. The purpose of this paper is to explore suitable ECI approaches that public owners could use.
Design/methodology/approach
In addition to a literature and document study, 14 semi-structured in-depth interviews with key personnel from 11 cases selected from Norwegian public bridge projects were carried out.
Findings
In all, 23 unique approaches of ECI were identified during this research (16 from literature and 7 new from case projects). The findings provide a new direction to ECI through introducing new approaches of ECI from the case projects.
Originality/value
This paper for the first time presents several alternatives of ECI approaches for public owners with the intention of illustrating ECI is actually possible in the public project procurement. Furthermore, it presents for the first time success factors of ECI with the intention of increasing the understanding of ECI concept from a public procurement perspective.
Keywords
Citation
Wondimu, P.A., Hosseini, A., Lohne, J. and Laedre, O. (2018), "Early contractor involvement approaches in public project procurement", Journal of Public Procurement, Vol. 18 No. 4, pp. 355-378. https://doi.org/10.1108/JOPP-11-2018-021
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited