This paper reviews collaborative integrative construction project delivery form practice over the last 25 years. It provides a summary of emerging trends to point to where this field of study is heading.
The paper is a reflective focussed commentary on prior published research undertaken triangulated by validation discussion with numerous academic colleagues and expert practitioners over a 25-year period.
Integrated collaborative project delivery forms have moved over the past quarter century from traditional delivery that is characterised by fragmented and opportunistically self-serving approach towards one in which an integrated united team of project owner and non-owner participants collaborate as an integrated team to deliver a best-for-project outcome. They do so by taking a markedly different approach to the traditional project owners' hands-off, fragmented and often adversarial behavioural approach. The mechanisms to do so are explained and illustrated in this paper.
The paper’s implications are to provide researchers, scholars and practitioners in the construction project delivery field with a picture of how the integrated collaborative project delivery form has evolved and operated. Its source of research references provides a 25-year perspective and is useful in any discussion of the delivery form for future case studies. It is limited to a detailed discussion of integrated project delivery/alliancing forms.
The paper provides tips and summaries of mechanisms that are vital for integrated collaborative project delivery.
Alliancing in Australia and New Zealand is primarily used on social and engineering infrastructure projects.
Few research papers have brought together findings for this field of study over a quarter-century timeframe. Researchers should find this paper valuable as a historical artefact that helps place their case study work in context with the field’s development.
1. Introduction
Collaborative integrated project delivery (IPD) forms have been undertaken for at least 3 decades. The history of this project delivery form has been neglected in the project organising literature, perhaps due to it being a relatively recent project delivery approach. Ashcraft (2022) provides a current indication of undertaken IPD research studies, and Lahdenperä (2012) provides a general overview of its history. The purpose of this paper is, therefore, to bridge that neglected gap for project-organising scholars by presenting reflections on collaborative IPD forms research and suggest where this project delivery form is heading.
The paper’s title articulates the research question. Two key characteristics of these project delivery forms are focused upon (1) multi-organisational team and project-within program integration and (2) multi-disciplinary and multi-organisational team collaboration.
The paper is based upon reflection on salient literature and interview and survey research data from expert practitioners gathered over the past 2 decades. Research findings drawn upon include:
A two-year, in-depth qualitative and quantitative study of the National Museum of Australia Alliance between 1999 and 2001 (Walker and Hampson, 2003);
A survey of project performance of 61 alliance projects completed between 2008 and 2013 (Walker et al., 2015);
A qualitative study commissioned by the Alliancing Association of Australasian of 22 expert alliancing experts from Australia and New Zealand (Walker and Lloyd-Walker, 2011) undertaken during 2010;
An IPD/alliancing qualitative study interviewing 50 (36 practitioners and 14 academic experts) subject matter experts (Walker and Lloyd-Walker, 2015);
A study of single versus dual Alliance target outturn cost (TOC) approaches (Walker et al., 2016) interviewing 20 practitioners; and
An in-depth qualitative study of the A$19.8 billion Melbourne-Level Crossing Removal Project (LXRP) with 24 key senior LXRP staff (Walker et al., 2025c).
Personal reflections are triangulated by validation discussion, with numerous academic colleagues and expert practitioners over that period. This paper’s aim is to make sense of integrated (including the project owner representatives) team collaborative project delivery forms and their evolution.
The remainder of this paper is structured as follows. Next, the current collaborative evolution and history of IPD are discussed, concentrating on alliancing forms and the project owner’s participation role (Section 2). Requisite hands-on project owner skills and capabilities of Alliance teams are then reviewed. This segues to concluding insights based on the authors' research over the past 25 years and speculates where alliancing appears to be heading (Section 3).
2. Evolution in construction project delivery forms
Lahdenperä (2012) identified three global forms of relationship-based project delivery approaches traced back to their historical roots. These are project partnering, project alliancing and IPD. He describes these three arrangements as follows (p. 58):
(Project) partnering is (a single project application of) a management approach used by two or more organisations to achieve specific business objectives […] and based on mutual objectives, an agreed method of problem resolution and an active search for continuous improvements (Bennett and Jayes, 1995).
Project alliancing is a method of delivering major capital assets where the owner and non-owner participants work together as an integrated, collaborative team in good faith, acting with integrity and making unanimous, best-for-project decisions, managing all risks of project delivery jointly and sharing the outcome of the project (Department of Treasury and Finance Victoria, 2010).
IPD is a project delivery method distinguished by a contractual agreement between a minimum of the owner, design professional and builder, where risk and reward are shared and stakeholder success is dependent on project success (Cohen, 2010).
The program of alliance projects can be added to that list. Taking a time-based perspective of project delivery, an evolution in project delivery approaches is illustrated in Figure 1 to have taken place from early “handshake” forms to current integrated collaborative project delivery practices.
The figure shows two boxes. The box on the left has two titled sections. The first section, titled “Project owner ‘hand-off,’” has the following pointers: “Centuries ago hand-shake,” “Industrial revolution to mid-late 1900s D B B and D and C,” and “Mid-late 1900s Partnering.” The second title is “Fragmented teams.” Under “Fragmented teams,” a long down-pointing arrow is accompanied by the text, “Mid-late 1900s Turnkey, B O O T, P P P variants.” The box on the right side is slightly lower than the first box. It also has two titled sections. The first section, titled “Project owner ‘hand-on,’” includes the following text: “Late-1990s onward I P D, I F O A.” The second section is titled “Highly integrated teams,” with the following labels: “Mid-1900s to current Alliancing,” and “2000s onward “U K N E C 3 slash 4 contracts,” accompanied by a downward arrow.Illustration of timeline evolution of collaborative integrated project delivery. Source(s): Created by author
The figure shows two boxes. The box on the left has two titled sections. The first section, titled “Project owner ‘hand-off,’” has the following pointers: “Centuries ago hand-shake,” “Industrial revolution to mid-late 1900s D B B and D and C,” and “Mid-late 1900s Partnering.” The second title is “Fragmented teams.” Under “Fragmented teams,” a long down-pointing arrow is accompanied by the text, “Mid-late 1900s Turnkey, B O O T, P P P variants.” The box on the right side is slightly lower than the first box. It also has two titled sections. The first section, titled “Project owner ‘hand-on,’” includes the following text: “Late-1990s onward I P D, I F O A.” The second section is titled “Highly integrated teams,” with the following labels: “Mid-1900s to current Alliancing,” and “2000s onward “U K N E C 3 slash 4 contracts,” accompanied by a downward arrow.Illustration of timeline evolution of collaborative integrated project delivery. Source(s): Created by author
2.1 Project owner “hand-off”
Centuries ago, traditional master craftsman worked closely with their project owners mainly to deliver places of worship, military infrastructure and workshop facilities. The industrial revolution introduced task-specialisation and fragmentation of teams of people delivering construction projects. The traditional design-bid-build (DBB) fragmented delivery approach had building owners commissioning a design specialist to co-develop a project design brief. These design specialists would complete the design from the project owner’s brief for several contractors to tendering/bid for the contract delivery. The successful contractor would deliver the project’s tendered design under the supervision of the lead design team representative. Inevitably, design changes would be required through the delivery process, resulting in the project costs being increased and delivery time often extended due to the fragmented nature of this project delivery system and its inherent knowledge transfer asymmetries.
DBB approach shortcomings have been well documented over past decades, criticising the fragmented and often opportunistic culture it created (Murray and Langford, 2003). Industry leaders called for change towards greater team integration and collaboration (Latham, 1994; Egan, 1998; Latham and Ernst, 2006). The response to this call resulted in a greater focus on delivering projects more effectively through closer integration and collaboration, resulting in the evolution of a range of construction project delivery contract forms that partially integrated the delivery team.
One early popular approach was the design and construct (D&C) approach, sometimes called design-build, where a project designer and contractor formed a single D&C entity that the project owner commissioned to deliver the project (Naoum and Egbu, 2016). Large-scale engineering projects have for several decades been delivered through a similar arrangement, Engineering Procurement and Construction Management (EPCM); often construction work is delivered through specialised trade packages coordinated and managed by the EPCM managing contractor serving a systems integration role (PwC, 2023). There are several versions of D&C, but none of them directly include a hands-on participating project owner and/or project facility operator.
Another integrated construction project delivery form that included the facility operator (but not the project owner) evolved around the late 1970s. Originally termed turnkey, a potential project owner would approach a turnkey operator with a project outline, usually for an industrial project, to finance, design and construct a facility, paid for by the project owner on completion, i.e. being handed the “key” (Masterman, 2002). Ahola et al. (2008) discuss this approach in relation to the Finnish Marine industry, but many other case study examples are given for other heavy engineering industries elsewhere in the literature. This is a project owner hands-off approach relying on the specialised expertise of the turnkey operator to coordinate and manage a set of team specialists. The approach also became known as Build-Own-Transfer (BOT).
Turnkey evolved into the Build-Own-Operate-Transfer (BOOT) approach, with the BOOT entity operating the facility for a concession period (Walker and Smith, 1995). It also often entailed the project delivery entity financing the project prior to the project handover to its owner. An agreed concession agreement had the operating entity collecting tolls, for example, or being engaged in other user-pays arrangements. This option was attractive to governments as it allowed project investments to appear “off-balance sheet”. This approach further evolved, becoming known as a Public-Private-Partnership (PPP) or Private-Finance-Initiative (PFI), with greater collaboration between the entity teams that collectively formed a special purpose vehicle to build and operate the facility (Smyth and Edkins, 2007). BOOT and PPP/PFI forms include the facility operator team but exclude the project owner as an active participant in delivering the project (Akintoye et al., 2003).
It is important to stress that the active (hands-on) participation of the project owner in the total delivery of the project is not present in BOOT/PPP/PFI. In those cases, the project owner often develops the project delivery brief and shortlists two or three consortiums to bid on the brief’s specifications and requirements. The project owner has little or no influence to modify, improve or otherwise change their brief requirements post-tender process final negotiations without paying a heavy change-order penalty. The majority of PPP projects often have around a 25-year operating concession period (Regan et al., 2011). PPPs can pose unanticipated long-term risks (Hodge, 2004). For example, if a hospital PPP is part of a medical campus development that includes other building components procured by DBB and D&C, then the PPP component will be set and fixed for the concession period. This restricts how an integrated hospital facility can operate when technology or other service delivery changes demand campus upgrades.
While PPP-type arrangements are partially relationship-based project delivery forms from the delivery entity perspective, they primarily deliver a service through their concession agreements and not an immediate product.
Team partnering evolved from DBB through a wish by all project delivery parties to counter fragmentation and opportunist behaviours by encouraging cross-team and interdisciplinary collaboration. Much has been written about partnering in its many guises, from insights about its the UK early days by Bresnen and Marshall (2000) to more current research into its evolution in Norway (Bygballe et al., 2010; Børve et al., 2017).
Partnering contracts initially tended to not have binding contractual obligations to collaborate and project teams remained somewhat fragmented due to their fiduciary duty [1] (Lydenberg, 2014) to their “home” organisation rather than the project owner. Collaboration becomes an aspiration rather than a contractual obligation in partnering arrangements, often with no sanctions for non-compliance with agreement project charter terms (Lendrum, 2003). The project owner is a signatory, but contractual arrangements remain structured through DBB or D&C governance mechanisms.
Partnering cases and surveys of projects have been studied extensively since the mid-1990s. Larson (1995) surveyed 260 US partnering projects and found that partnering showed no significant difference in project time, cost and quality outcomes between low-bid and non-low-bid projects and that partnering projects were more successful than non-partnering ones. He identified key partnering behavioural themes as teamwork, collaboration, trust, openness and mutual respect (p. 30). These themes have been noted as important in numerous other studies across many countries (Miles, 1995; Li et al., 2000; Wood and Ellis, 2005; Bresnen et al., 2024). What remains unclear, however, is the degree that partnered participants are legally bound to sign partnering contracts requiring them to sign a project’s partnering charter. This is because partnering principles are both a quasi-contractual and cultural issue.
The Nordic approach to partnering literature suggests that Nordic language terms for these arrangements when translated to English are called “partnering’. However, Nordic partnering contractual forms closely bind participants in what may be sees as Project Alliancing Agreements (PAAs), e.g. Jacobsson’s (2011) and a Swedish PhD study and several Norwegian case studies (Børve et al., 2017; Nevstad et al., 2018; Bygballe and Swärd, 2019). In these cases the concept appears close to alliancing and IPD at its second or third collaboration level (NASF et al., 2010, p. iii).
Since the 1990s, project delivery has come full circle, returning to the closely integrated and collaborative form of the ancient project owner-master builder form but with numerous important differences. Evolution or revolution? Revolution in terms of return to original trust and commitment roots, but, as with all revolutionary cycles, the trajectory shape is more of a spiral than a closed circle. Plus ça change, plus c’est pareil !
While partnering has developed and evolved with more experienced project owners, designers, contractors and sub-contractors, it is still fragmented from a single, united team integration perspective. As Lahdenperä (2012) notes, alliancing evolved from experience with partnering, but that it formalised the partnering charter into a joint multi-party integrated contract.
Alliancing has widely been used in Australia for over a quarter of a century. Bakshi (1995) explained, in a seminal article on alliancing, how the British Petroleum Andrew Alliance in the UK North Sea developed an offshore oil and gas field under highly cost/revenue and technical challenges. This successful alliance project was reported upon from a project procurement contractual perspective (Abrahams and Cullen, 1998). The UK Andrew Alliance project approach later inspired the Western Australia, Wandoo B offshore oil drilling platform alliance. This alliance team was formed in 1994 [2], commenced work in February 1995, and was completed by March 1997. Alliancing became more established from that time with the Sydney Water Northside Storage Tunnel project alliance (Clegg et al., 2002) as part of the Sydney Olympics infrastructure and the Museum of Australia, completed in 2001 (Auditor-General of the Australian National Audit Office, 2000; Walker and Hampson, 2003). Alliancing is also successfully delivering projects in Australia (cost/time and key result areas) for infrastructure projects, with 50 of 60 projects’ TOC at or below the actual project cost and 46 at or below scheduled completion time (Walker et al., 2015).
A further evolution of project alliances has been the management of an integrated program of alliance projects under an umbrella organisation or authority. Program alliancing has revealed an increasing trend for project delivery authorities (government departments, devolved utility, medical facility and transport infrastructure authorities) to bundle similar projects within a program of works that can be delivered through a program of alliance projects. This can have advantages of continuation of work packages, a pipeline of work that motivates design and delivery teams to take a long-term view of being engaged in alliances to counter boom-bust cycle risks. Australian examples include the Barwon Water’s alliance in the mid-2010s that helped counter contractor resource shortages during a boom-bust cycle. It provided in-house staff with learning opportunities through participation in the 5+-year program alliance that included contractors and sub-contracts, design consultants and the project owner representative (POR) utility authority. It also produced many continuous improvement and waste-rework avoidance opportunities that leveraged learning across the integrated projects with the program (Love et al., 2016).
Similar examples of programs of projects were reported in the Australian transport infrastructure sector initially with the Regional Rail Link (RRL) program of mixed alliance, PPP and D&C projects that provided lessons learned that were developed further on the LXRP (Walker et al., 2025a). These lessons were transferred from RRL to LXRP. One key lesson cited by an LXRP interviewee was that part of the LXRP's current success in delivering project packages is that on this A$19.8 billion 15-year program, was that 5 early alliance syndicates were awarded initial alliance package work through a competitive mechanism and that these syndicates continued to be awarded alliance work packages for the program duration. Packages range from several hundred million dollars to over a billion dollars based on alliance syndicates’ continued high project performance.
The trend for taking partnering to the next level is evident from Sutter Health in California, which responded to urgency by retrofitting its hospitals and medical facilities to be earthquake resistant following legislation passed in response to the 1994 Southern California Northridge earthquake. Sutter Health developed IPD as a supercharged partnering arrangement (Lichtig, 2005; Ashcraft, 2022). IPD as a project delivery choice by sophisticated project owners in North America with high levels of relationship-based project delivery experience to draw upon has become accepted and institutionalised (School of Architecture, University of Minnesota et al., 2016).
The UK has formed its own alliancing-type version initially based on the British Airport Authority’s amended framework agreement foundational principles on Heathrow Terminal 5 (Brady et al., 2007; Doherty, 2008; Davies et al., 2016) with intense integration and collaboration that spurred innovation and tutored a cohort of practitioners (Denicol, 2020) and influenced changes in the New Engineering Contract 3/4 versions. An organisation, Project 13, has resources including documented case studies https://www.project13.info/.
It becomes clear that successful alliancing, IPD and similar arrangements in use on UK megaprojects such as Crossrail, The Thames Tideway Tunnel, The London Olympics and High-Speed Rail 2 share commonality in the level of project owner capabilities to undertake a “hands-on” participating with other project delivery supply chain contributors. What does “hands-on” mean?
2.2 Hands-on project owner and project delivery teams characteristics
Project delivery processes have become far more complex and commercial when compared to the master builders of old. The revolutionary delivery team composition cycle went from integration to fragmentation and then back to integration and collaboration. It went from inspired goal-seeking motivation when building temples, churches and other places of worship centuries ago to behavioural “best-for-project” values seen today in IPD and alliancing forms. Integrated collaborative project delivery has evolved and developed across the centuries.
Key assumptions that support the argument for delivering a construction project through alliancing, IPD or NEC3/4 are that complex projects need the application of a requisite variety of skills that no single project delivery participant team possesses. To effectively deliver a highly complicated and complex project, all available knowledge, experience and creative thinking need to be applied to the project design through to delivery of the end result. Highly integrated collaborative delivery teams illustrated in Figure 1 have the advantage, through their low information and power asymmetry governance structures, to access participants’ critical thinking and insights to discuss design and delivery challenges and determine solutions.
This integrated and collaborative approach needs special and particular skills and capabilities not universally available in project owners and technically qualified project delivery practitioners. Delivery participants need to have the set of technical, business management and relationship-based knowledge, skills, attributes and experience (KSAEs) best nurtured and developed through practice (Hietajärvi et al., 2017; Walker and Lloyd-Walker, 2020). The project owner also needs to have advanced leadership capabilities to craft and shape a project’s purpose and brief and actively work, hands-on, with the project delivery team to effectively collaborate, tapping into the team’s KSAEs (Winch and Leiringer, 2016; Gulino et al., 2020).
Table 1 illustrates how a united single, integrated team liberates creative thinking and critical analysis to support sound decision-making and action plan implementation. The use of the term alliance below is used acknowledging that most IPD and NEC3/4 projects have similar arrangements.
Integration elements that collaborative teams deploy to work effectively as a united team
| Element | Notes and references |
|---|---|
| United single project team contractual form with the POR paying all direct project-related expenditures | A binding contract integrates the project owner representative (POR) participant with the non-owner participants (NOPs). In the alliancing case this is Project Alliance Agreement (PAA), in the case of IPD it is the Integrated Form of Agreement (IFOA), and for numerous similarly delivered projects in the UK the New Engineering Contract 3/4 (NEC3/4). These contracts specify that the POR pays for all direct project-related costs incurred by NOPs for the project. The POR pays for project insurances on behalf of all alliance participants which is more cost-effective than each paying separately. This encourages NOP team integration into a united team because the POR is directly paying for project-related expenses including participants employment costs, NOP fiduciary duty is to the project and not their home-based organisation |
| Joint project responsibility and accountability | The PAA and IFOA governance arrangements support and reinforce team integration through project-based and not individual POR performance (Ashcraft, 2015; Walker et al., 2025b). Participant are selected on, and must adhere to, taking joint responsibility and accountability for project performance (Department of Infrastructure and Transport, 2011) |
| NOP incentivisation | The PAA/IFOA also includes an agreed fixed negotiated margin price for each POR and a gain/pain sharing incentivisation agreement with key result areas (KRAs) and key performance indicators (KPIs) measured by the whole project performance (Ross, 2013). This effectively integrates participants into a single united team, each participant organisation is then judged by project performance and not their individual team’s contribution. They are therefore incentivised to achieve a best-for-project outcome |
| PAA integrated organisational structure governance arrangements | The organisational structure has two integration tiers. The project alliance management team (AMT) comprises representatives of the NOPS and each POR team; this integrates the NOPs as well as encourages collaboration. A second integration team comprises key senior company-level NOP executives in the Alliance Leadership Team (ALT) that is like a company’s board of directors. The ALT integrates the NOP organisation with the project through its project performance oversight role and access to each NOP’s organisational resources. This integration and collaboration element has been credited with positive workplace motivation and culture on numerous projects (Pitsis et al., 2003) |
| Integrated team decision-making and open respectful discussion | All parties are bound by consensus for AMT and ALT decision-making. Thus, allocating blame to NOP individuals is illogical because the united team is bound by consensus decision-making. Events often events compromise plans so a no-blame policy for participants’ early warnings that acknowledges making mistakes is not subject to reprimand. Reported errors are treated as lessons to be learned and a natural part of experimentation and innovation (Lloyd-Walker et al., 2014; Koolwijk et al., 2020) |
| Sharing innovation, learning and continuous improvement | To ensure that lessons learned are retained and that innovation is effective diffused the project needs a “knowledgeable client” as the POR. Most research results available in the literature suggest that hands-on PORs are experienced clients are clearly not “eternal beginners” (Flyvbjerg et al., 2021) constantly repeating mistakes due to corporate memory evaporating with each project’s completion There also needs to be governance measures in place to support learning and innovation. Highly integrated programs of alliance projects, learning can be designed-in to diffuse knowledge and innovation across projects. Australian examples of program alliances such as minimising rework on the Australia Barwon Water Alliance (Love et al., 2016) and continuous improvement governance mechanisms deployed on Melbourne’s LXRP (Love et al., 2025). These examples are instructive because they demonstrate motivated team collaboration as well as integrated knowledge and innovation from one project to another within a program of alliance projects |
Turning to cross-team and within-team collaboration elements of alliancing also provides a useful framework for this paper’s discussion of collaborative IPD.
How do Table 1 and Table 2 insights, among many, help explain how alliancing-type project delivery approach can facilitate high levels of team integration and collaboration to improve project outcomes? This can be answered by explaining the process by which the project design, cost, time and delivery plan, providing an illustration of its superiority over traditional DBB and D&C approaches.
Collaborative elements that teams deploy to work effectively in a united team
| Element | Notes and references |
|---|---|
| PAA behavioural contract requirements | A code of collaborative behaviour is embedded through the PAA/IFOA (Ross, 2013; Ashcraft, 2015). The contract specifically demands behaviours that support collaboration such as respect for others, being open-minded, curiosity to learn and understand, and demonstrating integrity. The impact of this source of commitment is that it encourages participants to fearlessly question decision proposals to seek clarification and understanding. The PAA also contains a no litigation clause and no-blame workplace culture that helps identify and discuss early potential issues before they become This culture of openness about problems has been shown to reduce rework and its negative impact on Alliance projects (Love, 2002; Love et al., 2019; Love and Matthews, 2022) |
| Experiencing trust and commitment through collaboration | Discouraging power-information asymmetry enables trust between participants and encourages affective commitment (Kadefors, 2004; Davis and Walker, 2008) to collaborate effectively at inter and intra NOP-POR alliance team level. Commitment extends to ensuring best-for-project outcomes, in part because of the KPIs relating to project outcomes and not any participant team’s performance. Trust reduces the emotional and financial transaction costs (Williamson, 1993; Haaskjold et al., 2019) |
| Collaborative dialogue | Through cross-disciplinary and genuine dialogue, issues become better understood to trigger more effective action. Dialogue different to debate. Effective dialogue occurs when one party presents a proposition based on best available knowledge that is challenged and examined through alternative perspective lenses to arrive at a superior outcome (Bohm and Nichol, 1996). Alliancing contractually relies on consensus decision-making, this is logical given joint responsibility and accountability because the focus is on project outcomes. Each discipline and participant has a body of expertise and knowledge that is respected and is freely shared through the low power/information asymmetric organisational structure. This encourages more effective decision-making and supports resilience and ambidexterity taking the collaborative initiative to resolve problems when plans begin to unravel |
| The project ambience | Alliancing workplace culture is critical for effective collaboration. Walker and Lloyd-Walker (2014) reported from a study on alliance projects that there was a specific feeling in the air, an ambience, on many alliance projects that supported close collaboration and sense of community. Finnish studies of alliance Big Room use observed co-located workforce mingling and exchanging ideas This resulted in high levels of collaboration (Aaltonen et al., 2023). This also occurs on IPD projects in the USA (Fischer et al., 2017) |
| Shared values and motivation | The POR has a role to play in creating high performance project teams. Articulating a unifying common purpose for the project through communicating the project vision and mission can galvanise collaborative behaviours. We see this in the LXRP for example where the POR co-developed with NOPs a set of clear answers to the questions: why do we exist? (as a project organisation); what values are important to us? What do we want to create? (the vision; How do we get there? (the project strategy); How do we monitor and measure success? (performance outcomes); what do we need to do? (plans and corporate support programs) and What do I need to do (personal development plans). This kind of articulation of the project and team’s purpose was shown to be inspiring collaboration in the LXRP case (Magree et al., 2025a, b). The LXRP values was consistently communicated and shared across the alliance work packages in the highly integrated program of projects |
IPD and similar delivery forms were inspired by lean construction techniques for project planning and delivery approaches. Lean construction was initially concerned with construction efficiency – seeing projects as input-transformation-output production management mechanisms (Koskela, 2000; Koskela and Ballard, 2006). Later, its scope expanded and developed to address construction delivery effectiveness. Returning to basics, lean construction practitioners ask, “What is the project’s purpose?” What makes economic and social sense? This approach led to ideas about Target Value Design (Do et al., 2014) and Target Value Delivery (TVD) (Ballard and Morris, 2010; Ballard, 2020).
In essence a PO first determines the project’s purpose, its expected realised benefits and the PO’s available budget. This turns around the project delivery process from brief (derived from the purpose), design, tender and delivery and then copes with cost/time overruns. TVD follows a purpose, design-to-cost and deliver route where the PO and a team of non-owner participants (NOPs) collaborate to design a project based on constructability and contractor and operator practical knowledge. The Andrew Alliance provides a classical early TVD example (Bakshi, 1995) within an alliancing context.
The alliancing TOC process shares close similarities with TVD in that a design solution is developed to fit the available budget, but it also addresses time budgets and a comprehensive construction process and risk management plan. TOCs are fixed price/time “bids”.
Early Alliance projects such as the National Museum of Australia used what is known as a single TOC approach (KPMG, 1998; Department of Treasury and Finance Victoria, 2010). The PO calls for an open expression of interest of designer and contractor syndicates to engage with the PO (and often the facility management entity) in an alliance to deliver the project as a single project alliance organisation. Criteria for selection are communicated clearly through the expression of interest including such aspects as evidence-based demonstration of an ability to work collaboratively as an alliance (consistent with PAA requirements), proven ability to meet cost/time targets, demonstrated ability to add value and bring innovation to the project and a number of other project-contextual conditions (Walker et al., 2002). A shortlist of two or three proponents are interviewed over a several-day intense workshop where they present their design concept and justify and prove their proclaimed capabilities. The most credible and suitable proponent is then selected. At this point, no price/time or design option is fixed, but an alliance remuneration (margin) fee is agreed upon by the PO for each NOP with an agreed fee and gain/pain sharing split agreement that fixes the alliance participant’s shared penalty level for not meeting the finalised approved fixed TOC or bonus for exceeding the TOC.
The single TOC approach has evolved since early projects such as the National Museum of Australia project with a phase from the mid-late 2000s decade where dual competing TOC proponents separately developed their TOC and the “best” (not cheapest or fastest) option was selected by the PO. This dual TOC approach has its drawbacks (Consult Australia, 2010; Walker et al., 2016). The main concern was that a single TOC might not provide value for money (Tamburro and Wood, 2014), even though both single and dual TOC approaches employ an external cost/time verification advisor to check TOC bids. The LXRP started their TOC process as a dual TOC to establish the first five Alliance packages, and they also established benchmarking provisions to monitor these first alliance work packages, and thereafter, they used a single TOC process for the remaining packages, confident that benchmarking data from these first five alliance projects and subsequent alliance project work packages provided sufficiently credible information to test subsequent TOCs’ value for money.
The TOC process is different from DBB and D&C tenders in several important ways. The aim of the TOC is to provide a TVD plan of a design proposal, fixed cost and time, carefully crafted risk and uncertainty contingencies and a project delivery plan. DBB and D&C tenders start with a design and end with a cost/time price and, in the case of D&C, a construction design. Typical design periods ready for DBB and D&C vary and there is no reliable benchmark for this. Alliance TOC periods, however, have been documented as typically 6–9 months, according to McCann, who has been involved in many alliancing project TOC developments (Walker and McCann, 2020). Recent LXRP alliance work package single TOC development, has taken about 10–12 weeks, due in no small part to the experience of TOC development teams on the 15-year pipeline of work on that program of projects, reuse of design and delivery technique knowledge and information across the integrated program of projects and a substantial body of benchmarking data across projects in the program.
Conclusions drawn from alliancing research in Australia points to the TOC process providing a more realistic cost/time for projects than might be the case for many (if not most) competitive DBB or D&C projects (Walker et al., 2022). Why so?
The nature of alliancing (and IPD using its TVD approach) is the integrated nature of this delivery system. By integrating the PO and facility operator team with the design and construction teams in highly collaborative TOC development, a far wider range of expertise is accessed. What may be an unknown or even unknown-unknown issue by one discipline team participant is a known or known-unknown by another. When cross-discipline and cross-organisational team integration is achieved, a range of perspectives can be drawn into discussion and decision-making through effective dialogue. This improves the assessment of risk and uncertainty, and with a more specific, detailed and reliable TOC contingency, can be developed, making the fixed price/time more palatable. Open discussion between the POR and NOPs during the TOC alliance development agreement phase of TOC development allows consensus about what contingency should be included in the TOC and which risk/uncertainty items should be met by the PO in its separate owner-contingency that may be accessed for items clearly outside the scope of the agreed TOC that may be subsequently dealt with as Target Adjustment Events. It should be noted that the TOC is fixed and includes a realistic contingency to ensure that when unexpected or unanticipated issues arise that are within the TOC scope, that delivery team is obliged to address these promptly without an opportunistic approach to gain advantage from the POR (Walker et al., 2022).
The TOC process, therefore, combines potential advantages of team integration and collaboration as shown in Tables 1 and 2 and addresses risk and uncertainty in a far more mature way that is evident in DBB and D&C. This supports an argument that alliancing/IPD is a superior project delivery approach for highly complicated or complex projects where the POR and NOPs have the requisite skills and capabilities to form an effective, integrated, collaborative united project delivery organisation.
3. Concluding insights, where to from here?
The evolution of sophisticated project delivery has moved over the past quarter century or so from a fragmented and opportunistically self-serving approach towards one in which an integrated, united team of POR and NOPs collaborate as an integrated team to deliver a best-for-project outcome.
A trend for integration in terms of like-projects within a program of projects with the aim of innovation and continuous improvement diffusion from one project to another within the integrated program is also emerging. Barwon Water and LXRP are good examples; others no doubt exist. Sutter Health in the USA is another example, and it could be argued that UK megaprojects such as Crossrail could have been viewed as a program of integrated project packages. Hospital and health provision and school projects in other jurisdictions may be attempting similar integrated collaborative project delivery systems. Lessons from the above insights could be valuable.
PORs need excellent relationship-building skills as well as understanding project management processes and having sufficient context-specific technical skills to effectively collaborate through dialogue with NOPs. This may seem unrealistic, but the Walker and Lloyd-Walker (2015) research project revealed, as did the LXRP research, that senior alliancing staff had moved between roles as POR, design team NOPs and contractor NOPs as well as some in facility operator NOPs. Comments and reflections by these senior people indicated that they had a sophisticated grasp of the perspectives of other of disciplines and organisations. Many of these interviewed people enjoyed the challenge and experience of exposure to alternative perspectives and treasured its learning opportunity.
Alliancing is focused upon in this paper (though IPD and NEC3/4 projects are similar) with respect to POR skills and capabilities required for effective alliancing, but the message from the many interviews and surveys undertaken on alliance and related research projects is that capabilities and skills identified by Winch, for example (Winch and Leiringer, 2016; Gulino et al., 2020) seem to centre around a growth mindset (Dweck, 2012), reflection on one’s own and others' experience and ability to learn and engage with others. This seems to trigger more realistic plans, reflexive responses to unexpected situations and resilience/ambidexterity (Turner et al., 2016).
A final insight from TOC (and TVD) approach research is that the approach generates a reliable cost/time target rather than aiming to provide the cheapest or fastest bid result. The latter often results in the final actual cost/time outcome exceeding initial bid/tender budgets.
To conclude, alliancing or IPD-like forms are not advocated as being a project delivery panacea. It is certainly appropriate to consider this form for highly complicated and complex contexts. The key implementation issue, however, is sourcing, hiring and developing people in the construction industry with the requisite skills and capabilities to effectively collaborate in IPD teams. People realise projects, not systems or machines.
This paper makes a theory contribution by (1) tracing alliancing-IPD’s evolution over a 25-year timeframe providing and (2) clarifying differences in POs hands-off and hands-on implications to project delivery choices. Its practice contribution is made through (1) its clear identification of the context in which an alliancing-IPD option may be chosen and (2) what participant capabilities and skills are required.
Research that can add further value to our understanding of this topic may include:
Investigation of how IPD/alliancing between-team trust facilitates collaboration and effective team/project integration;
Investigation of how the process of delivering project purpose and vision may differ between IPD/alliancing and traditionally delivered projects to take advantage of opportunities recognised through dialogue undertaken by broader interdisciplinary teams at the project front end;
More case study investigations of a wider range of IPD/alliancing/NEC4 projects to expand our knowledge of their livery performance; and
More quantitative survey studies to highlight possible performance differences between traditional project delivery and IPD/alliancing/NEC4 projects from the perspective of both the narrow iron triangle and broader delivery performance criteria.
Notes
Fiduciary duty refers to employees’ duty to primarily serve the interests of their employer.
