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Cost overrun is a significant issue in construction, an undesirable feature the industry has long been associated with. Poor procurement practices are often blamed for subsequent cost overruns in construction, especially with conventional procurement methods leading to outrageous cost overruns. The purpose of this study is to review the features of the new models of construction procurement (NMCP) and assess their potential to reduce cost overruns in construction projects.

A literature review was conducted to identify the issues of procurement leading to cost escalations. Primary data were obtained through exploratory, semi-structured interviews using a case study approach.

Clients’ lack of knowledge was highlighted as a key issue in procurement that interlinks with many factors causing cost escalation. The findings suggest that the features contained within the NMCP, such as early contractor involvement and collaboration throughout the project team, have the potential to make a positive contribution to addressing cost escalation in construction.

The primary research was undertaken as an exploratory study and presents the contractor's perspective. Further research is therefore suggested, with multiple organisations representing all key stakeholders in a construction project, including clients, consultants, sub-contractors and suppliers.

The study recommends awareness of the NMCP be raised throughout the industry, and simplified information must be made available to help widen uptake of these contemporary procurement methods.

Addressing the dearth of research concerning the use of NMCP within the industry, this study makes a niche contribution to the body of knowledge on construction cost management by illustrating the potential offered by these new procurement methods for addressing cost escalation. For an industry where collaboration is accepted with reservations, this case study demonstrates how novel collaborative strategies such as open book costing, project bank accounts and shared pain and gain mechanisms can be implemented as part of the procurement strategy and how such strategies can contribute towards minimising the cost escalation inherent in construction projects.

The clarity of requisite roles of public sector organizations (PSOs) for successful procurement of public-private partnership (PPP) infrastructure in Nigeria is not well-established as the country is portrayed with the rising statistics on the haphazard pattern of operation of PPP model for infrastructure procurement. This has greatly beset the expected performance of a number of PPP projects which were intended to bridge the infrastructural deficit in the country. This study therefore examined roles the performed by PSOs in PPP infrastructure procurement with a view to delineate PSOs obligations and consequently improve project success.

The study was based on structured questionnaire survey of professionals in PSOs who have been involved in PPP infrastructure procurement in Southwestern Nigeria. The sampled professionals were drawn from a build-up of network through a referral chain by the adoption of respondent-driven sampling (RDS) method. The data collected were subjected to mean score analysis and Kruskal–Wallis test.

The study found that roles pertaining to management of variation, apportionment of penalties and abatements, select preferred bidders, establish management approaches for PPP risks are infrequently performed by PSOs in Nigeria. Whereas these roles are critical to successful procurement of PPP infrastructure as they are prerequisites for PPP infrastructural project success.

The study provides information that would be useful for developing countries with evolving PPP markets for enhanced project delivery.

Non-traditional procurement is thought to offer enhanced benefits over traditional contracts. However, several factors significantly impacting the optimization of the benefits have been suggested. Even though effective communication is ranked high among these factors, not enough empirical insights have been given to the nature of communication performance in non-traditional procurements in construction project delivery. The purpose of this paper is to focus on understanding the taxonomy of communication performance in non-traditional procurements in the South African Construction Industry, given the centrality of communication to team effectiveness, performance, project success and managerial efficiency.

Adopting a deductive research approach, an empirical questionnaire survey was conducted drawing on the practical communication experience of project teams engaged in projects using non-traditional procurement systems.

Using aggregated mean scores and inter-rater agreement index and Mann‒Whitney tests, the results revealed inaccuracies, barriers and procedural challenges as frequently occurring in the interpersonal and organizational communication in the adopted non-traditional procurement systems. Additionally, untimeliness and distorted information were noted to be occurring occasionally, whereas incomplete communication, misunderstood information and gatekeeping rarely occurred. Lastly, protocol-related communication challenges were deemed to have never occurred in their interpersonal and organizational communication in their project delivery. In the assessment of communication performance, the less frequently occurring assessment indicator is a testament to good communication performance, whereas the frequently occurring indicator represents a poor performance in the communication.

This systematic approach toward understanding the taxonomy of the interpersonal and organizational communication performance in non-traditional procurement is very significant toward communication performance improvement in the industry. The insight given by the findings may help construction project practitioners to focus their attention on the necessary aspects of communication in non-traditional procurements to optimize their benefits over traditional procurement models.

Best value procurement (BVP) has been recognized for some time as offering significant opportunities to advance process excellence in the construction sector. As an innovative approach to strategic procurement, BVP has attracted attention from the New Zealand (NZ) Government. It has similarly been found that the most substantial benefit of this modified approach to procurement is in value creation and innovative organizational processes through identifying “best value.” Yet to date, there is a lack of robust evidence as to how BVP can exactly influence construction innovation. Accordingly, this paper aims to explore how to improve BVP implementation to promote construction innovation and what are the values to be achieved in BVP mega projects from the view of innovation.

Semi-structured interviews with 22 participants, including project managers, procurement specialists, engineers and general managers from three organization types, were conducted to explore BVP implementation in a range of mega construction projects in NZ.

Barriers to BVP implementation and value innovation have been identified in this paper. Data analysis suggested traditional mindset in the procurement process, market constraints, mistrusts and fuzzy definition of BVP are the challenges for BVP implementation; BVP cultivates organizational competition because of diverse collaboration models and value attitudes; and BVP considers more values from the whole supply chain. To promote innovative construction, existing BVP should consider adopting progressive enhancements toward updating procurement guidance, encouraging effective communications, collaborating and promoting changes in stakeholders’ mindset.

Identified barriers to BVP implementation set up a platform for framing guidance, which could provide an effective approach as it enables a better understanding of what BVP means to NZ and what needs to be overcome. Taking this into account, similar small size markets around the world would be able to consider the applicability of BVP for innovative improvements.

This paper provides insights into value concepts in project procurement. It theoretically and practically possesses originality in linking BVP to innovative construction. The study of BVP and its application further reveals the importance of establishing a distinct regulation and fostering organizational competition from value aspects to achieve construction innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to present a review of research developments on the ecosystem of driving forces for electronic procurement (e-procurement) on project procurement and to propose directions for future research for an effective adoption and sustained usage.

A systematic literature review was conducted in three phases to identify and examine literature. A total of 68 papers were retrieved and were thoroughly reviewed to identify the drivers for e-procurement.

A total of 61 drivers were identified and subsequently developed into a categorization framework for synthesized understanding which reveals existing interrelationships. Although literature has consensus on some selected drivers, few studies have identified drivers relating to sustainability. Gaps were identified from the existing literature and directions for future research were proposed.

Since this is a literature review, future research could conduct further investigations focusing on the research gaps identified. The framework developed presents a basis for further research to explore the drivers in various socio-economic environments.

This study provides valuable insights for improving the understanding of practitioners on the complex network of drivers for e-procurement. These findings stimulate discussions on benefits required for assessment in e-procurement adoption by practitioners.

This study provides the first comprehensive review of the drivers for e-procurement adoption in the construction industry, which was lacking in the existing body of knowledge.

The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into the reasoning behind the development of new procurement approaches by public sector clients.

A case study approach focuses on a procurement development process by a public sector client. It investigates the reasoning behind various applications of the project alliancing concept in rail infrastructure projects over a period of 15 years. Alliancing applications are singled out and mapped against a number of criteria derived from literature on alliancing. The reasoning behind these applications and their differences are reconstructed from contextual documentation. Theories and concepts from the fields of strategic management and knowledge management literature are used to analyse the results.

The development process seems to be evolutionary rather than deliberately planned. The uncovered variations in alliancing applications can only to a very limited extent be explained by the reconstructed reasoning. This suggests that the applied designs are mostly based on implicit reasoning by individual project teams. From a strategic management perspective, the development pattern resembles the emergent type of strategy formation.

This study offers an initial insight into the reasoning processes behind the (re-)design of procurement approaches within a public sector client organization. A unique feature of this study is that these reasoning processes are explored from the strategy formation perspective that conceptually links the design of new procurement approaches to strategic management theory.

Public procurement is a complex process. This complexity increases considerably when the procured product or service is an innovation, which often addresses new needs, requires different skills, takes on higher risks and thus demands organizational change. In this paper we argue that because of those demands procuring innovation necessitates the use of advanced project management techniques and an intelligent multistep project design. We underpin this argument by presenting a case study of the procurement of an innovation within the UK National Health Service which had stalled for many years but then was successfully completed by using those project management techniques. We highlight the different processes needed for the procurement of innovation compared to standard, business-as-usual procurement, and we suggest the management of procurement as multi-step, multi arena projects as a strategy for innovation procurement.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the outcomes of Indonesian power projects as representative projects of Asian emerging economies that were procured via public-private partnerships (PPPs) and traditional public sector procurement. Power generation infrastructure delivery in emerging economies frequently seeks private participation via PPPs as one of the key mechanisms to attract private finance. Undertaking a comparative benchmark study of the outcomes of Indonesian power projects provides an opportunity to explore the historic evidence as to whether PPPs deliver better outcomes than traditional public procurement in emerging economies.

This paper reports on a study of the performance of 56 Indonesian power projects procured via either PPPs or traditional procurement. First, it focusses on project time and cost outcomes of power plant facility during construction and commissioning and then extends this comparison to consider the operating availability of power plants during their first two years of operation.

The results indicate that PPP projects had superior time and operating availability to those procured traditionally whereas no significant differences were identified in the cost performance between PPPs and traditionally procured projects. These findings highlight the importance of adopting policies that are supported by broader sources of international financiers and high quality power plant developers.

The quality performance analyses of projects (based on equivalent available factor indices) were limited to the power plants in the Java-Bali region where the majority of projects are large scale power plants.

This study provides an empirical basis for governments of emerging economies to select the most beneficial procurement strategy for power plant projects. It highlights the importance of selecting experienced providers and to adopt policies that attract high quality international project financiers and power plant developers. This includes the need to ensure the commercial viability of projects and to seriously consider the use of cleaner power technologies.

This study is the first to compare the outcomes of power projects in Asian emerging economies delivered via PPPs against those delivered by traditional public procurement that includes consideration of the quality of the delivered product.

Offsite construction (OC) is an efficient method to reduce waste in the construction industry from a circular economy perspective. Yet, its uptake is subdued by the ambiguities around its supply chain. Hence, the purpose of this study is twofold: to identify the OC project delivery models, the limitations in their procurement approach to facilitate the resilience of the supply chain and interventions to promote supply chain resilience (SCR) and to identify the gaps in the existing procurement process and propose further research areas that implement strategies to improve SCR.

The study was conducted as a systematic literature review. In total, 41 peer-reviewed research papers published between 2013 and 2023 were shortlisted through the preferred reporting items for systematic reviews and meta-analysis guidelines. A descriptive analysis was conducted, followed by a thematic analysis.

The descriptive analysis reveals that the emphasis on digitising OC has shifted to transforming the business model, procurement and supply chain with a human-centric view. In thematic analysis, the predictability of the SC partners and the probabilities of evaluating the prospects are revealed as arbitrary characteristics in the current procurement strategies. Rewarding collaborative relationships among SC partners and incorporating provisions to postpone the module delivery are some interventions to promote flexibility. Drafting comprehensive and effective contracts that address transparency issues and facilitating the need for continuous development of capabilities through procurement are among the further research avenues proposed.

This study is a precursor demonstrating the potential of the procurement process to implement the decrees of SCR for better goal congruence of the OC supply chain.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the influences of the characteristics of procurement strategies, in this instance labour-only, on project performance concerning health and safety (H&S), a project performance indicator.

Using non-probability purposeful and snowballing sampling methods, questionnaires were used to collect data from construction professionals in Nigeria. This was then analysed using descriptive (frequency and mean scores) and inferential statistics (Mann–Whitney-U and Kendall's Tau_b tests).

The findings indicate a statistically significant negative correlation between ‘the level of client involvement and ‘fatalities' and a positive one with ‘conducting of health and safety risk assessment' and ‘conducting employee surveys on health and safety attitude’. Poor hygiene is found to be the worst lagging indicator, while conducting of inspection is the most adopted leading indicator of project health and safety performance. It also emerged that there is no significant difference in the health and safety performance of projects procured through the procurement strategy in urban and rural areas.

The study provides valuable insight into the complexities in H&S management due to the high level of client involvement in labour-only procurement system (LoPS) projects and the level of diversity in their responsibilities therein. It creates a fundamental direction for developing a detailed framework or guidance notes for client involvement in the integration of H&S into LoPS projects.

This is the first study that examines the influence of the characteristics of procurement strategy on project health and safety performance. Evidence in the literature shows that project delivery outcomes significantly improve if procurement is strategically used, including when it is considered early in projects. However, integrating H&S into procurement strategies has received little attention.