Project alliances: An investigation into the logic behind the range of a Dutch public sector client's initiatives

For fifteen years, the Dutch railway agency (ProRail) has implemented various alliance elements in its procurement strategies. Several project alliancing applications have been developed and applied in succession, ranging from a limited shared risk domain to a directly tendered full alliance model. The progress seems to be evolutionary rather than planned. The emergence of these alliance variants suggests implicit motivations and expectations. Changing the implicit reasoning to explicit logic could help in the evaluation and development of alliance approaches, from project-based evolutionary adaptations to a conscious planned strategy.