Mutual trust and openness are the key to the partnering relationship: a form of collaborative working which has hitherto been the province of the building sector but which is now beginning to be adopted by the civil engineering sector.
Bad working relations, disputes leading to legal action and the unwavering struggle amongst all parties to avoid going into the red: this is the reality of many cases out there in the building sector.
As a result, the late 1990s saw the parties in the building sector begin to develop alternative collaborative models. The partnering arrangement is one of those which made such headway that it is now being taken up by the civil engineering sector.
Equal partners
In a partnering relationship the parties involved in a project - typically the client, the consultant, the architect and the contractor - enter into an arrangement as equal partners delivering a project.
In contrast to a traditional building project, a partnering project is characterised by an explicitly collaborative approach, shared business aims and shared profits or losses as appropriate. All parties operate open book accounting.
Pioneers
As one of the pioneers of the development of the partnering model, COWI has collaborated on some 30 small and larger scale partnering projects in Denmark since the late 1990s.
By Janne Toft Jensen
Published 27.06.2005
