Owner project capabilities in infrastructure projects: Unpacking commercial capabilities

The critical roles of social and economic infrastructure are well understood; and the many contemporary pressures put on the scarce resources available, such as citizens' rising expectations, ageing infrastructure, urbanization, and sustainability are well rehearsed. What has received significantly less systematic research attention is the role of government bodies (public sectors) in the project execution and delivery through which they acquire infrastructure assets. This paper draws on ongoing case study research, which seeks to partially rectify this imbalance by investigating how the public sector organisations charged with the definition and delivery of large infrastructure projects are structured and resourced, and how they undertake the definition and delivery of the projects they promote; and what effect this has on the project outcomes and asset delivery. This paper locates its contribution in the theoretical literature on organisational capabilities and its roots in the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm. We take as our point of departure the emerging literature on client side project capabilities for infrastructure development—termed owner project capabilities, which refer to the dynamic capabilities that are required by public sector clients/owners to develop infrastructure assets and deliver public services. More specifically, based on an extensive literature review, we unpack the owner project capabilities needed to develop and maintain commercial interfaces with the project-based firms which supply the human and material resources—which we dub commercial capabilities. Examples of such capabilities include, but are not restricted to, packaging capabilities, contracting capabilities, and relational capabilities. This paper indicates how these capabilities are systemic and uses empirical data to illustrate how they are developed and deployed across organisations. The conclusions lay bare the importance of rejecting the notion of project management as a best practice toolkit, which is always applicable, to instead direct attention to which capabilities should be deployed.