تدارکات عملکرد پیچیده در ساخت و ساز: ترمینال 5 هیترو لندن و یک بیمارستان ابتکاری امور مالی شخصی

This paper takes as its starting point the fact that complex projects, interpreted as multiple dependent interactions between many stakeholders over time, challenge traditional procurement practices based on the serial purchase of discrete components. The paper examines how the procurement management of such projects – procuring complex performance – can be conducted. The paper utilises two contrasting case study examples of high-profile UK construction project procurement. The findings suggest that the choice of mechanisms or interfaces for the governance of upstream supply relationships critically relates to subsequent performance. The theoretical contribution is a fusion of procurement literature with the influential CoPS literature.

Recent scholarship, galvanised by the influence of Vargo and Lusch's (2004) work on service logic and environmentally grounded work such as Mont (2004), has begun to question the manufacturing bias and inheritance in many approaches to services. As the economy is increasingly servitized (Vandermerwe and Rada, 1988), the work of business-to-business procurement professionals is increasingly characterised by purchasing a combination of product and service. One example of this phenomenon is the blurring of traditional boundaries of ownership, design and post-construction performance in major construction projects. This development in part at least reflects previous disappointments with traditional ‘design construct and hand over’ to the client models, where the construction team takes no responsibility for post-construction performance, ease of use and flexibility (Egan, 1998). The contractual forms that are emerging to support this newly ‘servitized’ construction model must incentivise the construction industry to provide new levels of service, for example innovative environmental practices, ease of maintenance, flexibility once in use, and ease of ultimate disposal. The client must, in effect, procure complex performance (as opposed to a complex building), clients increasingly value the ‘in use value’ of the building or infrastructure over the bricks and mortar construction. The construction industry then is a good sector to study how clients are procuring complex performance (PCP). PCP has been defined by Lewis and Roehrich (2009) in terms of a matrix comparing high and low transactional complexity, versus high and low infrastructural complexity. This is a helpful meta-analysis, but the concern of this paper is with the practices that make up procuring complex performance. The overall aim is to understand the practices that compose PCP in major construction projects that are also product-service systems. Therefore given that procurement is relatively well accepted as professional purchasing, and performance from above indicates a product and a service being bought in combination, our focus here is on an initial working definition of the complex part of PCP. In line with, for example, Kash and Rycroft's (2002) definition of technological complexity we see complexity in this context as being that which prevents the buyer from simply buying discrete components (including service systems) and combining them together – i.e. the task cannot be accomplished by the serial and additive transaction mode of traditional (manufacturing) procurement. To explore this issue of procuring for complex performance, the paper compares the design and construction phases (therefore excluding the operation phase) of two complex construction product-service systems, both located in the UK. The first is the construction and delivery to the client operator of a new terminal at London Heathrow Airport, Terminal 5 (T5), and the second the construction of a new hospital funded under the ‘Private Finance Initiative’ (PFI). In Lewis and Roehrich's typology, the hospital would be high in performance complexity and low (or at least not high) in infrastructure complexity (hospitals construction contains many ‘knowns’). The construction of T5, however, would be both high transaction complexity and high infrastructure complexity. Fig. 1 positions both projects in the Procurement Complexity Space. In both cases the focus is on the core project client/contractor relationship, with the wider network of relationships necessary to contract and deliver complex performance. The wider network is only introduced when necessary to understand client or contractor behaviour.

The paper has added a procurement perspective to the influential CoPS perspective to examine procurement practices in two complex performance procurements in major construction projects. It has also identified actual practices to support and inform the meta-level analysis of the Procurement Complexity Space proposed by Lewis and Roehrich (2009). It has been suggested that the two examples of contracting for complex performance take substantially different approaches. The PFI case is more traditional in trying to offload risk via a detailed contractual mechanism, and in adopting manufacturing-style procurement practices. In contrast T5 sought to identify and expose risk, and then to incentivise those parties best qualified to manage the risk to take innovative approaches, comfortable with the knowledge that their work load and margin would be acknowledged and protected. Other differences relate to the extent that previous learning and capabilities could be brought to the project, although the advantage provided by the scale of T5, e.g. in designing an information system, has to be acknowledged. Although this paper has only examined a limited number of areas, one key area of difference is the client/contractor interface. Here BAA sought to control internally much of the early decision making in comparison to the contractor-led approach taken in PFI. The BAA approach was far better suited in engaging the talents of the supply base, whereas in PFI such contributions are directly mediated by the prime contractor. It should also be stressed that BAA will have no relationship in the operating phase of T5, whereas in PFI the main contractor is still involved, albeit via a facilities management division. The paper has explored the practices of complex procurement to address the question how should complex performance be procured in the design and construction phase of major construction projects? The cases’ analysis suggests traditional mass production commodity or product-based management and procurement are not appropriate, as evidenced in a lack of innovation in the PFI case. Procuring complex performance from these cases needs to involve suppliers and some levels of value co-creation, often ex ante. A lack of market prices was identified as a sign of procuring complex performance (PCP). In these construction cases the start-up phase appears critical, the more successful case spent start-up time on how the project could work (including communication, supplier selection and relationship management) and less time on formal specifications. This is suggested as a feature of PCP and linked to the differing motives of public and private clients, that is transparency versus value creation. Finally the influence of market maturity on the possible levels of trust was identified, suggesting a key factor of successful PCP is understanding and working with the dynamic of the market, for example not attempting to move faster than the market will allow, e.g. in terms of recruitment and retention or even risk taking. It is important to reflect upon the work's limitations and further research opportunities. The research work presented here is highly context-bound; further conceptual and empirical work is needed to investigate the relationships between context, process and outcome of using different control mechanisms (Pettigrew, 1985). There is a need to understand how unique the PFI/PPP and T5 contracting mechanisms really are; such large undertakings have in fact been constructed since before written records. Apparently new techniques and approaches may mask deeper continuities.