Trust, the Foundation for Long Lasting Construction Cooperation

Employers and contractors that work closely with one another from the early stages of projects, and step away from traditional contracting models that encourage an adversarial relationship, are more likely to build lasting partnerships that offer the potential to address challenges around sustainable development, innovation, and supply chain resilience.

FREMONT, CA: The Construction Productivity Task Force's new private sector construction playbook, Trust and Productivity, which aims to assist employers, contractors, and consultants in embracing collaboration to achieve better productivity and innovation throughout the lifecycle of a project, makes that point very clear.

Three factors frequently cause project failure: teams not communicating effectively, team members pulling in opposite directions, and substantial risk unfairly pushed upon one of the parties to a contract. It claimed that this leads to conflict and mistrust in a relationship. The Taskforce has pushed for starting a project with a well-structured, defined set of project principles and objectives that support trust-based relationships and a coherent culture, giving stable foundations for project success. This will drive behaviour and set the course for the project.

By outlining the behaviours required of all parties engaged in a project, promotes transparency and builds confidence. This is a crucial first step in avoiding confrontational contracting. The playbook goes into great depth about creating the groundwork for a project's success in the beginning. The project vision, the team's culture to embrace, the objectives, the project strategy or brief, and a list of known risks or restrictions are just a few examples of the things that must be documented.