From a background of directing major projects such as the Channel Tunnel and the Jubilee Line, Bob Ibell has seen the emergence of partnering in recent years through the eyes of a major civil engineering contractor, and felt keenly the drawbacks and benefits.He gave a finely judged address asking us to evaluate the success of partnering using four criteria: understanding; courage; trust; and openness.

The common adversarial approach to construction contracts resulted in unhelpful commercial attitudes to problem solving: nebulous programming, inequit-able risk sharing and litigation that all contributed to spiralling costs and completion over-runs. He warned that altruism was not part of the process: the parties engaged in partnering purely to obtain a better outcome for each and were unlikely to embrace the idea if a beneficial outcome for all was improbable.

When considering criteria for judging performance, Ibell mentioned bankers as an example of those who needed to understand more about the construction process: performance bonds and damages do not guarantee successful outcomes. Contractors needed courage to believe they would be treated reasonably. Managers needed courage to make judgements based on their observations and experience without a constant barrage of criticism from others in their organisations who did not understand what was going on.

Trust should exist in the relationships between parties to the contract. Trust should not detract from credibility but enhance reputation. Openness would result in there being only one set of books from which to derive one set of figures when out-turn costs were discussed. He did not believe that these examples were yet commonplace and argued that a drop of 30% from 55 partnering agreements in 1998 to 39 in 1999 reflected, among other factors, a degree of disillusionment. Undoubtedly, progress had been made, but there was a long way to go before partnering agreements delivered their optimum outcomes.

Hadyn Davies opened his opposing address by showing the success of partnering in the retail, hotel and building side of the business. The burden of his argument lay in looking at the success of partnering contracts across the whole building and civil engineering industry and concluding that tunnelling was a little behind the trend. The case of claims for extra payment was used as an example.

Davies said that, in the ‘bad old days’ of adversarial contracting, the contractor would sign up for a low price, then lodge many claims for extra payment. It would be certain that these would not be dealt with expeditiously by the client/Engineer and would be left to the end of the contract to resolve. By that time, all the staff who knew the history would have left. The quantity surveyors tasked with coming to an agreement would allow at least 50% of what was on the table because nobody could argue against it.

&#8220Bankers have to understand that performance bonds and liquidated damages do not guarantee successful outcomes”

He concluded that, even if not yet perfect, partnering contracts resulted in better outcomes than if they were not used. Quoting his current experience on the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL), where partnering is incorporated in the contracts, he stated that there were no claims at all – only compensation events.

Partnering must be made to work

Alan Myers, seconding the motion, made an impassioned address underlining his belief in partnering as the only workable way forward. Partnering worked for all the parties but,to date, we had only reaped limited benefits. Under traditional forms of contract, the inequitable risks borne by contractors involved in lowest-tender bidding caused the focus of the construction team to be set on increasing the value of the contract and recovering costs. His vision of a client who entered into a contract with equitable risk sharing, a contractor who considered the client’s long-term needs in planning and executing the construction, an architect who designed something that was practical and cost-effective to build and a designer designing what the contractor wanted to build seemed to constitute Utopia compared to current experience.

But he was sure that good partnering contracts would be the norm in three ‘generations’ of contract. The whole process of effective partnering began with the client and his method of procuring the contract. From this followed the steps necessary to effect the improvements to partnering that all parties were eager to attain.

As the last speaker, Mike Attridge opposed the motion using a Machiavellian allegory of contract procurement and construction practice to illustrate all that had been unsatisfactory in the past. He said our vision had been clouded by a few instances where partnering had been adopted as the only way out of a construction disaster. Of course, in that type of situation, such initiatives do effect recovery of budget, works and programme. Partnering entered into as a conscious decision by all involved at the start of the contract was usually successful and engendered good working relationships and shared objectives. This was much to be preferred and the results quoted by Davies previously went to support this stance.