Engaging Stakeholders Early

2. Early Stakeholder Involvement and the Project Definition Process in Relational Contracting

At the moment, an "over-the-wall" practice prevails in the industry. In such a practice, the plans are given to the next designer or "customer" in the process until the plans are ready. Because no one seeks to support each other, this practice leads to suboptimization, where the stakeholders just strive for optimizing their own performance. Furthermore, there is a tendency to rush into the details of the design without a proper understanding of the premises.

Relational multi-party contracting challenges the traditional system by contrasting the customers' purpose and what they want against the means (how is it done) and constraints (e.g., money, regulations, and time). Consequently, this new approach helps expose the customer to alternative means of accomplishing their purposes beyond those they have previously considered and helps the customers understand the consequences of their desires. Figure 2 summarizes the differences between traditional project delivery and relational project delivery methods.

Figure 2. The ideological difference between traditional and relational project delivery.

Probably, the most well-known relational project delivery methods are project alliancing and integrated project delivery (IPD). Project alliancing is a procurement model of major capital asset delivery where the customer and nonowner stakeholders work together as an integrated, collaborative team in good faith, acting with integrity and making unanimous, best-for-the-project decisions, managing all project delivery risks jointly and sharing the outcome of the project.

IPD is a project delivery method distinguished by a contractual agreement between the owner, design professional, and builder, at a minimum, where risk and reward are shared, and stakeholder success is dependent on project success. The method integrates people, systems, business structures, and practices into a process that collaboratively harnesses the talents and insights of all participants to optimize project results, increase value to the owner, reduce waste, and maximize efficiency through all phases of design, fabrication, and construction. The previous definitions are examples among several definitions, but they put across the collaborative nature of the models and the involvement of the project stakeholders. Later in this paper, we use the term "relational project delivery method (RPDM)" to illustrate these new relational-based approaches.