PhD Final Thesis April 2013.pdf - Anglia Ruskin Research Online

Thesis Keith Gale 2013Current professional practice regarding procurement of construction projects placesuse of frameworks at the centre of the strategy, but some individuals that warn ofconcerns over usage regarding value for money and restrictions placed byframeworks with engagement of new suppliers. Use of incentives and long termrelationships offered by frameworks are used to encourage performance and thesetopics offer debate by clients and professions to the industry. Although anecdotalclaims for improvement in performance are made, research reflecting the outcomesof projects included within a framework agreement is limited. This research aims togather evidence from a case study to analyse the effectiveness or otherwise of aframework agreement and to propose a performance model that is relevant toprofessional practice.The case study for this research is embedded within the infrastructure deliverydepartment of a large local public sector authority. Findings from this research areexpected to be of interest to all public sector organisations that propose engagingsuppliers through use of a framework agreement method of constructionmanagement. In order to provide a link between this research and that of CentralGovernment, an interim summary paper was produced in October 2010 whichanalysed initial findings of a pilot study. Appendix 7: Reaction from CentralGovernment towards this research contains letters received from two Ministers ofParliament including the Minister of State for Construction and Enterprise in supportof findings concluded at that stage and confirmed the importance of this research. Inaddition, a number of published papers placed with professional bodies andpresented during academic conferences notifying findings during the researchprocess are referenced later in this thesis.1.6 Background to the researchThe research uses project outcomes as a measure of performance to develop amanagement model to encourage further improvements in the effective delivery ofprojects. Interest with performance of the construction industry in the recent era wasinitiated through executive summaries and commentary contained in two significantUK government reports – Constructing the Team (Latham, 1994) and RethinkingConstruction (Egan, 1998). Criticism of performance with the construction industrywas not new, even at during the 1990’s. It had been voiced for over six decades prior11