Explore Critical Factors for Partnering in the Taiwanese Construction Industry

The annual production yield of the Taiwanese construction industry has been roughly 16.5 billion USD, representing approximately 5% of total GDP, during the recent decade, indicating that it contributes significantly to overall economic development in Taiwan. It was recognized that by partnerships rather than having traditional adversarial relationships that the industry could lower costs, achieve success and increase its chances of survival. Since 1990, the key industry players have adopted alliance and partnering strategies. Although there are a number of successful projects, there have also been failures. This paper presents results from construction industry survey conducted in 2008. The purpose of the study was to gather the construction industry’s opinions on critical success and failure factors of partnering agreements. The data have been analyzed by use of means and ranking techniques. The study shows that”effective communication”is perceived as the most important critical success factor in the construction project partnering. Some of the other perceived important critical success factors are “technical expertise”, ”consistent with objectives”, ”questioning attitudes”and ”commitment to quality”. The study also suggests that in the construction industry,“issues being allowed to slide and escalate”,”lack of continuous open and honest communication”, ”controling body’s lack of technical knowledge”, ”stakeholders who don’t commit to the partnering arrangement”and ”stakeholders who don’t develop a win-win attitude”are viewed as the main factors which often cause failure of alliances and partnering.