Practitioners’ Perspectives on Supply Chain Collaboration in UK Construction Projects

Since the beginning of 1990s, there has been an increasing emphasis on supply chain collaboration in the UK construction industry through learning from manufacturing. The adoption of supply chain collaboration is now widely recognised as an effective way of addressing various traditional construction problems. This paper presents the findings of a research project that examines the practitioners’ perspectives on supply chain collaboration in construction projects. The critical success factors (CSFs) of supply chain collaboration are identified from an online focus group discussion and ten expert interviews, whose results are analysed by using the NVivo software package. Unlike existing studies, this study develops an input-process-output model based on the categorisation of the identified CSFs. In addition, supply chain collaboration is compared between public and private sectors, between short-term and long-term programmes, between upstream and downstream supply chains, and between different areas of relationships. The comparative analysis describes the balanced and the unbalanced natures of supply chain collaboration. The findings in this study provide a better understanding of supply chain collaboration in today’s construction practice. Although this study is based on the UK construction industry, its findings may also be useful for construction organisations in other countries to pursue supply chain collaboration.