Managing multiple markets: big firms and PFI contracts

The Private Finance Initiative (PFI) is frequently portrayed as a vehicle for change for the UK construction sector. Significant change in the working practices of construction companies is predicted as new business models based on whole-life value creation emerge. This paper shifts the focus of discussion from projected ideals and possible developments to the current situation. More specifically, it focuses on the challenges that large firms participating in both PFI and traditional markets face. The analysis focuses on the relations between business units and on day-to-day challenges to greater long-term commitment, through life-service provision and increased integration between construction and service provision. The paper offers insights into the effects of PFI on construction practice and their implications for theorizing on organizational and strategic change. It suggests abandoning a simplistic model of the centralized, homogenous firm and instead capturing the dynamics of decentralized, large firms working in multiple markets on a variety of projects. This would assist in the provision of more realistic and fruitful models of how to realize the PFI vision.

Managing digital coordination of design: emerging hybrid practices in an institutionalized project setting

What happens when digital coordination practices are introduced into the institutionalized setting of an engineering project? This question is addressed through an interpretive study that examines how a shared digital model becomes used in the late design stages of a major station refurbishment project. The paper contributes by mobilizing the idea of ‘hybrid practices’ to understand the diverse patterns of activity that emerge to manage digital coordination of design. It articulates how engineering and architecture professions develop different relationships with the shared model; the design team negotiates paper-based practices across organizational boundaries; and diverse practitioners probe the potential and limitations of the digital infrastructure. While different software packages and tools have become linked together into an integrated digital infrastructure, these emerging hybrid practices contrast with the interactions anticipated in practice and policy guidance and presenting new opportunities and challenges for managing project delivery. The study has implications for researchers working in the growing field of empirical work on engineering project organizations as it shows the importance of considering, and suggests new ways to theorise, the introduction of digital coordination practices into these institutionalized settings.