A critical analysis of the gap between collaborative risk management policies and practice in construction projects in the Scottish Highlands

Construction is an industry of low profits, high risks and frequent insolvencies. Recent high-profile collapses have led to more calls for clients to collaborate and share commercial risks with contractors. The effective practice of such policies may be hindered, however, by the adversarial culture of the industry and its largely positivistic view of itself. Literature shows that the acquisition of effective commercial risk management skills requires socialisation across an epistemologically broad range of mainly applied subject disciplines. However, although human-social-interpersonal skills were not ignored in the socialisation of a young Quantity Surveyor within the study, greater emphasis was given to the development of their technical abilities. The development of such human-social-interpersonal skills is key to collaboration, risk-sharing and the development of longer-term working relationships Two case studies of a building contractor and a utility client in the Scottish Highlands use documentary analysis, semi-structured interviews non-participatory observation and the seminal work of Argyris' & Scho?n's (1974) on espoused theories and theories-in-use. These find that a gap does exist between the organisations' commercial risk management policies and their practices. The historical, epistemological, cultural, organisational and interpersonal drivers of this incongruence are considered, together with the implications for the industry and areas forfuture study.