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Early contractor involvement (ECI) faces many barriers because it differs from traditional business practices. Public owners, especially, face a major challenge because they must comply with international and national legislation. The purpose of this paper is to develop a framework that illustrates the various approaches that public project owners can take to implement ECI.

In addition to a literature review, three groups of case studies were carried out. The case studies were based on 54 semi-structured in-depth interviews with key personnel from 21 Norwegian public projects and document study.

In all, 25 approaches to ECI were identified during the research. Twelve of these were used in the cases studied.

There are several approaches to ECI that are suitable for public owners. However, the contractor’s contribution depends on which approach is implemented and how it is implemented.

As original contribution, this study presents a novel framework that defines options for implementing ECI in public projects. Furthermore, this paper provides insights on how ECI can be implemented in public projects based on Norwegian experiences. Although the empirical data of the study is limited to Norwegian public projects, this study contributes to knowledge about how to implement ECI internationally.

Relational contracting is increasingly being applied to complex and uncertain construction projects. However, it has proved hard to achieve stable performance and industry-level learning in this field. This paper employs an institutional perspective to analyze how legitimacy for relational contracting has been produced and challenged in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden, including implications for dissemination and learning.

A collaborative case study design is used, where longitudinal accounts of the developments in relational contracting over more than 25 years in four Nordic countries were developed by scholars based in each country. The descriptions are underpinned by literature sources from research, practice and policy.

The countries share similar problem perceptions that have triggered the de-institutionalization of traditional contracting practices. Models and policies developed elsewhere are important sources of knowledge and legitimacy. Most countries have seen pendulum movements, where dissemination of relational contracting is followed by backlashes when projects fail to meet projected outcomes. Before long, however, relational contracting tends to re-emerge under new labels and in slightly new forms. Such a proliferation of concepts presents further obstacles to learning. Successful institutionalization is found to rely on realistic goals in combination with broad competence development at the organizational and industry levels.

In seeking inspiration from other countries, policymakers should go beyond contract models to also consider strategies to manage industry-level learning.

The paper provides a unique longitudinal cross-country perspective on the field of relational contracting. As such, it contributes to the small stream of literature on long-term institutional change in the construction sector.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how the concepts of business models and project governance can enhance value creation in building projects.

Based on theory derived from management literature, the authors outline a framework combining a project’s business case and governance functions with the business model of the design team. This was tested in two major projects and evaluated in three expert workshops.

The research reveals that the business model of the design team focus on efficiency rather than on the client’s strategic objectives. This entails a need for project governance functions. The framework presented shows promising capability of aligning the project with client strategy. The authors believe there is significant value in transferring these ideas and knowledge across national boundaries.

The research identifies a gap between business objectives and outcome. The value creation approach in the client organisation diminishes into the way project governance is implemented in some projects. The conceptual framework provides the industry with a new tool for improving its knowledge and practice.

First governance model derived from strategy theory that combines strategy and governance in one holistic model.

The purpose of this paper is to describe how resilience unfolded in a project-based organization with the support of organizational values through changing leadership styles. The rapidly announced restrictions on businesses during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) provided an opportunity to observe and study resilience unfold.

The process-perspective case study approach of a structural and civil engineering design firm in San Francisco, California, USA, integrates interviews, observations, document analysis and information tracking via email and Microsoft Teams. The researchers adopted a leadership perspective, where the units of analysis are the internal management and the employees' behaviors.

In the case examined, the capability represented in the organizational values influenced the choice of situation-appropriate leadership styles to support employees. The values of relationship, passion and trust influenced the dominant choice of a transformational style, where stability and excellence facilitate a transactional style – all equally important for the balance and resilience of the project-based organization.

This study demonstrated that when organizational values support leaders in cultivating a learning environment, those values provide stability for leaders to promote resilience. To the best of the researchers' knowledge, no previous work described how situational-, transformational- and transactional-leadership styles evolve in response to a crisis and together facilitate organizational resilience.

To achieve the shift towards sustainable construction the industry must change the project delivery methods used. Therefore, this paper reports on a high-performance building project that implemented a collaborative project delivery method through the examination of the following research questions: RQ1: What were the most important contractual, cultural and organisational elements studied in the collaborative project delivery method? RQ2: What were the effects of the studied elements?

A longitudinal case study approach was adopted. As for means of data collection, a document review, semi-structured interviews, and observations was conducted. A total of 20 observations (App. 80 h, 175 pages of notes) and 12 interviews (App. 20 h, 100 pages of notes) with project participants was conducted.

The analysis indicates that if attention is paid to task, team and individual needs through contractual, cultural and organisational elements, this will affect the development of an integrated team.

We demonstrate that the effects of the elements are shown through their achievement in creating and sustaining an integrated team of inter-organisational participants working in a collaborative environment.

It provides a better understanding of how a collaborative project delivery method for the design phase emphasises team integration. We demonstrate that while the principal sets the contractual boundaries by deciding the contractual elements, the agent should be intentional in the selection and use of organizational and cultural elements.

The paper suggests that it is not enough to just have contractual elements implemented. Consequently, this insight suggests that managers should be attentive to the untapped potential that lies within organisational and cultural elements.

Due to the increasing risk and uncertainty of construction projects, contractual flexibility has been considered as an effective tool to cope with emergences and to promote cooperation between owners and contractors. However, in practice, owners often failed to build an efficient cooperative relationship via contracts, resulting in a lacking of appropriate justice. Furthermore, due to a lack of available empirical research, the influence of contractual flexibility on the cooperative behavior of contractors requires further investigation. The purpose of this paper is to fill this gap by conducting empirical research from the perspective of justice perception.

A theoretical model was developed and a series of hypotheses were proposed. Then, partial least squares structural equation modeling analyses were conducted on a sample of 188 respondents.

The results show that contractual content and executing flexibility both have a positive influence on the cooperative behavior of a contractor, which was partially mediated by distribution, procedural, and interactional justice perceptions. Moreover, content flexibility has a significant impact on all three types of justice perception, and the execution of flexibility has more impact on interactional justice compared to other justice perceptions.

The findings contribute to an improved understanding of how contractual flexibility affects the cooperative behavior of contractors, indicating that the owner could develop a fair exchange relationship through flexible contracting and motivation of the other party.

With the aim of furthering the understanding of project speed and how to manage the urgent project, the purpose of this paper is to investigate the management challenges involved in delivering a telecommunications infrastructure project in a period of much shorter duration than a similar project. The authors wanted to understand the reasons behind the urgency and how the project management team succeeds in delivering in such a tight time window. Finally, the authors assessed the consequences (negative and positive, during and after the project delivery), knowing that the project was considered a success at its delivery, but not that it was successful at the post-project evaluation.

A case study based on qualitative research interviews with management team including the client, the main contractor and some related stakeholders, combined with case archives and internal documentation from the case project.

The urgency of a project or programme may lead to some negative consequences and impacts. The success seen in a short- and mid-term view is not enough to justify making acceleration decisions: thus holistic thinking and a long-term sustainable approach are needed to ensure continuity and profits.

This research is based on a single case study. There are some limitations regarding how urgent and unexpected the case was managed in comparing to normal case. A second limitation is that there is no clear definition of what are normal practices such that we can say what are a normal case and an urgent case.

There are some lessons learned from this case study about managing the unexpected and the urgent. Practitioners can obtain insight into positive and negative consequences of fast project delivery from this case.

This study is unique in its content and context, since it presents the first-hand insight into a case study that seemed to be successful to some extent (short-term impact); however, negative consequences appeared within a few years of its delivery.

The purpose of the paper is 1) to address the importance of contingency at the right level when defining project control baseline, including cost reserves / “room to manoeuvre” and 2) present proactive uncertainty management as a regime to ensure cost effective management of project reserves and contribute to project success.

The paper is a combination of literature study and quantitative research on how contingency develops during the lifetime of a case project. The investigation into the case project includes document study into quantitative material from the case project. The combination of empirical material and theory makes the discussion robust.

Unrealistic low cost uncertainty will lead to unrealistic low contingency. The case study from a Norwegian mega project shows a contingency of 15 per cent in addition to expected costs. The case study shows that by continuous opportunity management and risk reduction, the needs for management reserves are systematically reduced and the contingency is controlled.

This research is limited to one case study. A higher number of cases are necessary to generalise the findings. However, the authors would claim that the systematic mapping of need for management reserve towards the project contingency, and a continuous uncertainty management system will help to obtain cost effective management. The findings from the case study could be applied on similar cases.

The case study shows a way of setting contingencies and managing contingencies through systematic uncertainty management.

Improved management of project provisions will increase the value of future projects.

The ultimate purpose of this paper is to report on a research thesis that contributes to making public projects more relevant and sustainable. The objective of this paper is to make readers aware of the thesis. The objective of the thesis was to develop a deeper understanding of how governance frameworks can contribute to such development. The research study aimed at developing new knowledge about governance frameworks and how they influence major public projects.

Critical realism was chosen for the research as an ontological and epistemological position. A whole array of different research methods are used, ranging from theoretical analysis to group processes, in dept interviews and a survey. Document studies and triangulation support the conclusions.

The research is structured around five research questions including identifying the most important governance functions in an owner perspective, how to design a governance framework, what are the most important problems that lead to lack of relevance and sustainability, what characterizes an effective improvement strategy for governance frameworks, how to charge public infrastructure investment projects with the right direction and level of ambitions. The questions are thoroughly answered in the thesis.

This research contributes to both project governance and project management through a more clarified interface between these two spheres. The thesis offers practical help to those involved in developing or improving governance frameworks for major projects.

The thesis offers new insight in the interplay between governance functions and management functions, challenges in developing and implementing governance frameworks, adds new awareness about the lack of logic and consistency in current Norwegian projects. Its greatest potential is in its contribution to relevant infrastructure investment projects with sustainable effect.