CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION 1.1 Background of the Study
The practical application of Partnering in construction had created concern in many countries over the years had created immense awareness on project quality, cost and delivery within schedule. Many researchers advocate the fact that partnering process have a substantial positive impact on project performance, not only with regards to time, cost and quality objectives, but also with regard to more general outcomes such as greater innovation and improved user satisfaction (Latham, 1994; Bennett and Jayes, 1995; Bennett and Jayes, 1998; Bresnen and Marshall, 2000).
The client’s perceptions for a successful project outcome and satisfaction have become the major issue that have created concern over the past three decades (Egan, 1998). According to Chan et al 2004, increase in competition, risk and poor performance in construction works have given rise to searching for other procurement options other than the traditional procurement methods. The most prevalent issues faced in the traditional procurement is adversarial among the parties of the construction industry. This problem has developed to lack of cooperation, and lack of trust among the construction professionals (Ibrahim, 2005).
Some of the major setbacks caused by the traditional procurement method were its inability to address fragmentation among the stakeholders in the construction industry. Fragmentation is the chain of functions between the parties to a project. The architect design, engineers prepare the services design, the quantity surveyor, provides the cost estimation of the project. This network of functions by the parties prolongs the duration of the contract (Kubau, 2009;Gunathilaka et al., 2013).