Construction Projects: Establishing a Procurement Strategy

Introduction

The construction industry is one of the major contributors to the gross domestic product of many economies, and as a result, it is important that the environment of the industry is kept as healthy as possible. Previous research studies based on the construction industry (NWPC, 1990; Latham, 1994) have emphasised the key improvement areas, and one of these areas is the selection and use of a suitable procurement strategy in any construction project.

The construction process has been seen as involving “all those activities, be they technical, managerial or strategic which make up the realisation phase of a project where the physical facility actually appears, and on completion, the facility is in a useable state, which is an important part of the whole project endeavour and actually impacts the perception of the client” (Rowlinson & McDermott, 1999: pp. 27). But then the concept of success is generally an ambiguous one in a construction project because of the varying perceptions of the project participants, since they will all have their own view of success (Chan, Scott & Lam, 2002). Therefore, several issues need to be considered in order to ensure the success of the outcome of a construction project.

However, current research (Chinyio, Olomololaiye & Corbett, 1998) confirms that construction clients have been dissatisfied with the performance of construction consultants and contractors on most projects, but Kometa & Olomololaiye (1997) found that there are several factors which influence the decision of construction clients’ decision to build and which ultimately also affects the project’s outcome as well. Despite this, researchers (Rowlinson & McDermott, 1999) still believe that construction contractors and other professionals have a duty to operate within ‘best practice’ tenets