Harper, D G and Bernold, L E (2005) Success of supplier alliances for capital projects. Journal of Construction Engineering and Management, 131(9), pp. 979-985. ISSN 0733-9364
Abstract
Energy sector capital projects typically cost hundreds of millions and even billions of dollars. Managing the engineered equipment is important not only because of their high dollar value but also because the long manufacturing lead times often drive the overall project schedules. In recent years, several supplier alliances have been successfully implemented on such projects leading to initial price savings in the range from 6 to 10%. This paper presents the result of a study to assess the opportunities and barriers with such partnerships. Interviewed company executives perceived that time savings and quality improvements, mostly due to the suppliers' specialized expertise, are of much greater value than a lower bid price. Most surprisingly, very few companies use metrics to measure performance, thus leaving them in the dark on the question of how well an alliance worked or why it failed. The relevance of the presented work is in the amount of actual field data that has been generated and processed.
| Item Type: | Article |
|---|---|
| Uncontrolled Keywords: | capital improvement; cost control; lean construction; partnership |
| Index terms: | cost control, lean construction, time saving, executive, lead time, capital project, energy sector, savings, quality improvement, partnership |
| Subjects: | practitioner, economic analysis, strategic project management, project delivery, financial and cost management, industry analysis, time analysis, project controls, partnership management, building construction |
| Topics: | Time Control, Site Management, Quality Management, Stakeholder Management, Roles and Professions, Business Strategy, Cost Management, Research Practice, Project Management |
| Descriptive scope: | 2 PC |
N.B. Descriptive scope is a count of how many of the five facets of empirical research are indicated by the words used in title, abstract and keywords. It is not intended as a judgement on the research; merely a count of the kind of word we would expect to indicate Phenomenon, Concepts, Theoretical framing, Empirical techniques, Analytical techniques. If all five are present, then a code of “5 PCTEA” will indicate this. If you feel the coding for this record is questionable, we welcome discussion around the terms we matched or the way we categorized them. The facet you would expect may not be coded, or a facet may be coded inappropriately. This can also bear on a larger question, of which facets should be treated as defining in construction management research. Please get in touch, and we will look at it. More details here