The concept of partnering in public–private partnership projects in the United Arab Emirates

The construction industry is known for poor performance and adversarial relations between its participants; traditional procurement processes based on competitive tendering are often blamed for this deficiency. Partnering was introduced in the literature as an approach that encourages co-operation across contractual boundaries. After two decades, it has arguably not been as successful as was hoped. This paper investigates the perception of contractors participating in public–private partnership (PPP) projects in the United Arab Emirates to enhance partnering implementation processes. The study focuses on project-level interactions on PPP projects. Two projects were examined in the field research as case studies through qualitative interviews with a total of five key personnel, in addition to collecting relevant data from contractors’ archives. The research identified agreements on some of the claimed advantages of partnering such as improved performance, optimum use of resources and improved client satisfaction. However, there was no consensus regarding many features of partnering, including co-operation, improving relations and developing trust between parties. This was attributable to the inadequate experience among project teams, the lack of management leadership and the gap between management and project teams’ perceptions of partnering. The research concluded that leadership, training and clear definition of responsibilities between the partners are among the main success factors for partnering projects.