Early contractor involvement (ECI) has been heavily investigated in the context of large infrastructure projects. While there is a growing tendency among Norwegian infrastructure projects to use ECI, there is little evidence regarding the effects of ECI on small projects. This study aims to investigate the potential benefits and challenges of ECI in a small construction project in Norway.
The research design is based on an embedded case study approach with longitudinal evaluation. The empirical data for this research comes from semi-structured interviews, survey questionnaires, focus group discussions and document analysis.
The results show that ECI can benefit small projects requiring out-of-the-box thinking. The strongest arguments favoring ECI are that it promotes innovation, gives better risk adaptability, and allows participation from all client organization levels. In the case project, the onboarding of the operators was found to be especially helpful, which resulted in a more operationally optimized solution. The main challenges with using ECI for the case project were the lack of a standardized contract format, additional stress at the operational level and unfamiliarity with the overall process.
This study provides new insights into the effects of ECI and adds to the debate regarding whether ECI can be a viable option for small construction projects in the future. The findings can give practitioners hints on optimizing ECI usage in small projects and avoiding potential pitfalls.
