Public construction projects have an image of poor performance, both in the Netherlands and other countries. Too many public projects go over budget and over time. A possible improvement to this poor performance could be Early Contractor Involvement (ECI). ECI literally translates to involving a contractor “early”, which in current practice implies that the contractor is involved before the design phase. As a more unambiguous definition was missing for this principle in the Netherlands, this research identified two varieties of ECI; a consulting form (like a market consultation) or a contracting form, where the contractor is contracted during the final stages of the initiation phase. ECI is suggested in literature to be a promising option to improve public construction projects in the Netherlands, but literature is split on what ECI is and what the benefits are. This thesis study aims to identify the effects, implications and implementation of ECI in the Netherlands. From this study, eight potential benefits of ECI have been identified by means of a Delphi study. Some examples of these benefits are improved risk assessment, risk distribution, higher project quality and higher certainties in both costs and planning. However, reaping these benefits requires preparation and experiments with projects using ECI. There currently seems to be no initiatives with ECI on the agenda, except the refurbishment project of the Hoevelaken intersection.
To implement ECI in the Dutch public construction industry, this research found several conditions to implement and use ECI. Firstly, the role division of the client, design firm and contractor should be done differently. Secondly, the distribution of the risks must change. And thirdly, procurement may have to be specifically designed for ECI. In addition to these conditions, there are three barriers to overcome. These barriers are primarily concerned with the client side of the market. The client fears the early commitment to just one contractor and finds it hard to secure the competition in the market properly when ECI is used. Following these two barriers is a third; there is a lack of determination to experiment and implement ECI. To help overcome these barriers, four incentives are identified to be applied simultaneously:
• An investment from the public sector to experiment with ECI,
• Design of a proper exit-clause to terminate the contract,
• The use of Past-Performance criteria for procuring projects with ECI,
• The application of incentives on contractor behavior.
When ECI is implemented in public construction in the Netherlands, ECI will have implications on both public construction projects and the construction industry. In procurement the criteria other than price are likely to become more important, as price is unrealistic to test on so early in a project. Contractors will have to develop their advising role and expand their designing/engineering capacity. As their expertise and capabilities develop, design and engineering work is likely to flow from the design firms to the contractors. The engineering expertise of the client must expand as well, to be able to communicate on the same level as the contractors to prevent communication errors and opportunistic behavior.
This research suggests that ECI can indeed improve public projects on several aspects, but if there are too few experiments to develop and improve the concept it is unlikely to see implementation soon. As communication, perseverance and determination are key in experimenting with something new, this thesis advocates investing in ECI experiments with people who are capable and willing to try to make ECI work. Proper preparation and learning from the experiments will create forward momentum. When forward momentum is gained, ECI could be disproved to work or be proved a working innovation in the construction market, marking the next market improvement on the road to collaboration in the construction industry.

Infrastructure asset networks form a vital part of all economies worldwide. Although failure of road, rail or water infrastructures can have a huge impact on society, governments are under constant pressure to reduce, account for, and justify expenses. So too for the costs of the construction and maintenance of the infrastructures networks. The effective and efficient management of the performance of these infrastructure assets is therefore an important topic for (governmental) asset management organisations. Recent developments in the field of asset management, such as the introduction of the ISO55000 for Asset Management, show an increased interest in an integral approach to asset management (The Institute of Asset Management, 2014) and having a clear alignment of strategic mission, vision and goals and operational activities – line-of-sight – is promoted as an essential part of the performance management for asset management organisations. “Brownfield” asset management organisations, i.e. pre-existing organisations with already some forms of performance management systems and a history in asset management, are now increasingly looking to professionalize their systems, similar to the suggested developments in literature...

The construction sector is one of the biggest consumers of raw materials and generates large amounts of construction waste as well. CE is a way to delink the construction sector from the consumption of finite resources of the earth and excessive waste generation. Despite of the fact that there are a lot of interventions, such as Commodity agreement, Transition Agenda, it is not clear how CE can be executed in practice. This research aims to develop a guidance and a framework on the adoption of more circular innovative technologies in construction projects and to propose an approach that can support involved parties in order to realize more circular construction projects. This research adopts a unique approach in transitioning the construction sector to a CE using Service Dominant Logic (SDL). One of the key sources of non – adoption of CE is the lack of harmony or agreement on a suitable definition of CE for the construction sector. This may compromise the process of decision-making and eventually lead to ineffective policy interventions. Successfully implementing CE in the construction sector needs a definition that covers the whole construction supply chain to provide understanding of material flows in the economy.

The client and contractor have to take on a new role in Best Value projects, and this is not as comfortable or intuitive for everyone. People can behave irrationally in conflicts, but conflicts are bound to happen in projects. The objective of this research was to design a set of actions to prevent conflicts in Best Value projects. The first part of the research focused on identifying the main causes of conflict in Best Value projects. The data was gathered through semi-structured interviews with fourteen project managers from clients and contractors to understand how conflicts originate and evolve in Best Value projects. The analysis showed two causes of conflict in Best Value projects. (1) The lack of involvement of the client’s client leads to unnecessary process- and technical-related conflicts during the execution phase. Often the conflicts occur after tasks are completed, and the hand-over takes place. (2) Best Value forces the contractors to prove their trustworthiness towards the clients. However, contractors often do not continue to prove their trustworthiness, which makes the client anxious. This will lead to traditional and controlling behaviour. A set of actions was designed to help contractors and clients to prevent conflicts in the execution phase of their Best Value project. The interviews and expert sessions are the input for activities that could be used. These activities were analysed to identify actions for the clients and contractors in Best Value projects. The actions focus on making sure that the client’s departments can be involved in the projects or on building cognition-based trust during the project.

Architectural firms can be regarded as creative professional service firms. As such, architects need to navigate creative, professional and commercial goals, while simultaneously attempting to fulfil client, user and societal needs. This complex process is becoming increasingly difficult, as the historically established role of architects has become more blurred, contested and heterogeneous. While attempting to reclaim their role or to take on new roles in collaborations with other actors, architectural firms are challenged to develop business models that are financially viable and professionally satisfactory. These business models need to facilitate firms in capturing both financial and professional value in co-creation processes, and they must also suit the project-based structure of the firm. This research contributes insights into how firms might capture multiple dimensions of value in project-based work. It generates new perspectives on processes of organizational value capture and business model design, and provides concrete, practical insights into the difficulties of and opportunities involved in value capture by creative professional service firms.@en

This thesis describes how contractors in the water construction industry can capture and store performance information to present in tenders for Best Value projects. It describes which performances are relevant to present in such tenders, how performance information can be captured during projects and how performance information can be stored within the contractor's organisation for presentation in Best Value tenders.