An investigation into the performance of management contracts and the traditional methods of building procurement

This research pursues the development of management contracting in the UK construction industry and aims to compare it with the traditional method with a view to providing some indication of how both systems may be matched to particular circumstances. A theoretical model was used to assist in comparing project performance in a case study sample of 39 management contracts and 30 traditional form of contracts, and have identified several variables which could influence the performance of a project. The first main hypothesis proposed is that management contracting can satisfy clients who need their projects quickly and for projects that are large and/or highly complex. This led to a second hypothesis, that project performance is a function of the characteristics of the client, the project, the designers, the contract procedure employed and the procurement method adopted for their projects. The use of management contracting is growing throughout the UK, but the percentage of traditional contracting is still greater than other forms of building procurement method. Analysis of the 69 case studies suggest that management contracting performs better in some respect than traditional contracting, in particular, when time is the essence of the contract and when the project is highly complex. However, in the construction of large simple buildings, there was no strong evidence which shows that management contracting can perform better than the traditional form of contracts. Moreover, analysis of the results also suggests that procurement method is not the only variable affecting project performance. The client's requirements, the designer, the characteristics of the project and the contract procedure employed, all had their relative effect on certain performance measures as defined by time, cost and quality.