Implementing and Sustaining the Best Value Approach in a Large Organization

The Best Value Approach (BVA) has been in research and development for 30 years [1992 – 2022]. The approach has been successfully tested in the procurement of over 2,000 projects [98% customer satisfaction, minimized contractor change orders to 1% and reduced cost of 5 to 30%] (PBSRG, 2022). The BVA has been successful in delivering construction projects but has not been sufficiently tested in the delivery of contractual services. In 2018, a large organization tested the BVA on procuring recycling services. In 2019, the organization ran a second BVA test to procure the delivery of janitorial products to 7,000 facilities. The BVA utilizes the use of performance information to identify and utilize expertise to dramatically reduce their cost. The case study shows how a vendor can use performance information to define their expertise and value. The paper tracks the performance of the expert vendor for three years [2019 – 2021]. The case study also shows the value of the expert vendor’s project manager as the project manager was the only person in the vendor’s organization who understood the importance of using performance information.

The Best Value Approach (BVA) has been in research and development for 30 years [1992 – 2022]. The approach has been successfully tested in the procurement of over 2,000 projects [98% customer satisfaction, minimized contractor change orders to 1% and reduced cost of 5 to 30%]. The BVA has been successful in delivering construction projects but has not been tested in the delivery of contractual services. In 2018, a large organization tested the BVA on procuring recycling services. The BVA has two paradigm shifts: a new procurement and project management approach. The new approach minimizes the need for the client to direct and control the vendor and minimizes the need to depend on the relationship between the client and vendor. The BVA replaces the dependence on the relationship with performance information. The performance information creates transparency and minimizes the need for the client to direct and control the vendor. The objective of the BVA is efficiency: to reduce cost and increase profit, revenue and value. The paper tracks the performance of the BVA on recycling service for the first four years of the recycling service [2018 – 2022].

Public procurement in many European Union member states remains strongly price-oriented, often at the expense of delivery performance, innovation, and effective risk management. This study examines how the Best Value Approach (BVA) operates within a post-transition, legality-focused administrative environment through a document-based embedded case study of a major public construction contract in the Czech Republic. By analysing artefacts from the Selection, Clarification, and Execution phases, the study traces how BVA’s core governance mechanisms—expert signalling, vendor-led risk ownership, and information-centric oversight—functioned under locally constraining conditions. The findings show that BVA improved capability sorting, surfaced risks earlier, and enhanced transparency through structured reporting instruments such as Weekly Risk Reports (WRRs), Directors’ Reports (DRs), and Key Performance Indicators (KPI)s. However, the performance effects were partial. Three boundary conditions attenuated BVA’s mechanisms: a 40% price weighting that constrained qualitative differentiation, the omission of a formal Value-Added (VA) pathway for supplier-initiated optimisation, and the absence of continuous expert facilitation to support methodological fidelity. A documented execution-phase cost variance of approximately five percent further indicates residual volatility where key BVA complements are incomplete. The study integrates Principal–Agent theory, New Public Governance, and institutional isomorphism to explain why BVA’s governance architecture activated only in attenuated form and identifies the institutional conditions that moderate its effectiveness. While limited to a single revelatory case, the findings support analytical generalisation to similarly price-dominant, audit-driven procurement regimes in post-transition EU member states and offer practical guidance for evaluation design, innovation pathways, and facilitation models.

The Vietnam Construction Industry (VCI) has been facing risks that cause delays, budget overrun, and low customer satisfaction that required continuous research efforts on solutions. This paper focuses on how the Best Value Approach (BVA), a procurement and project management philosophy, could be utilized in VCI projects to improve overall performance. Analysis from six industry experts determined how current VCI conditions, namely risk and success factors, are related to the BVA. Sixteen BVA success principles were identified and ranked based on their perceived impact to project performance by an industry survey with 98 VCI practitioners. The results show high agreement rate with all sixteen BVA principles. Spearman’s rank-order correlation test determined relatively high agreement between owners and contractors, and lower agreement between owners and consultants on the ranking. The majority of participants agreed that the BVA would improve project performance and were interested in learning more about the BVA. The results encourage further BVA testing and education in the VCI. This approach is not limited to the VCI but could be followed by other developing nations.

The Chinese Construction Industry (CCI) is struggling with poor project performance (including cost overruns, delays, and lower satisfaction ratings). Previous research has identified that other developing countries are struggling with similar issues. According to the available economic data (GDP, growth, corruption, etc.) the CCI is very similar to construction industries in Vietnam and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. A literature review suggests that the CCI struggles with similar risks as these two countries. The primary difference between the CCI and other industries is the socialistic environment. Several research efforts have shown the Best Value Approach (BVA) to be a feasible solution to reconciling project performance in both Vietnam and Saudi Arabia. The research shown herein investigates whether the BVA is a feasible solution to performance issues in the CCI. Using available literature, the authors created an industry expert survey to investigate whether BVA concepts can address the performance issues in the CCI and if they can be implemented despite government policy. From 204 responses, the results suggest that most professionals are dissatisfied with the CCI performance, over 50% believe BVA concepts will improve the performance of the CCI, but only 40% believe that the BVA would be implementable in the CCI.

Strategic planning is an important stage in the administrative process, as it is considered a specific thinking process and style of work that enables the company to choose the best alternatives that correspond to the company's capabilities and the goals it seeks to achieve. This study aimed to find out the impact of strategic planning for human resources with its dimensions (environmental variables, needs assessment, dealing with results, human resources plan) on the performance of project management with its dimensions (time, cost, safety, quality), and to determine the strategic interaction between (HRP) on the performance of project management in infrastructure contracting companies and its role in facing external challenges. The study used the descriptive approach, through which the researcher developed a scale to answer the questions of the study. The study sample consisted of 120 employees in infrastructure contracting companies, they were divided into non-overlapping groups. The results showed the impact of strategic planning for human resources on the performance of construction project management and its contribution to raising the level of readiness of construction companies in facing external challenges and enabling them to compete with international companies, in addition to the contribution of strategic planning in facing the negative effects resulting from the Corona pandemic. The results are according to the company's age, capital, and the size of the company's project. The results of the study also showed that strategic human resource planning helps project management officials in the early detection of expected danger areas and attracts well-equipped workers with the appropriate skills to work efficiently. Doi: 10.28991/CEJ-2022-08-08-014 Full Text: PDF

This research seeks to show the importance of risk management (RM, henceforth) and knowledge management (KM, henceforth) for project success (PS) and to investigate the mediating role of project management performance (PMP). Online questionnaire was distributed to 220 project managers among all 200 Jordanian first class construction companies. The data from 165 respondents were checked and coded for statistical analysis using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) with Analysis of Moment Structures software (AMOS, 20) and Statistical Package for the Social Sciences software (SPSS,20). The results indicated that RM and KM have significant positive effects on PMP and PS. Moreover, PMP was found to have a significant positive effect on PS. The results showed that PMP was the strongest predictor of PS while the strongest predictor of PMP was RM. From the results of mediation analysis, it was found that PMP partially mediates the effects of RM and KM on PS. The study recommended that Jordanian construction companies should consider seriously RM and KM in their projects since they will protect the projects from such failures as completion delay, overrun, low quality or safety incidents. In addition, the construction companies have to pay more attention for project management training and the use of the best practices of project management which will improve the overall organization performance.

The CIB Working Commission W117, “Performance Measurement in Construction,” is one of the more innovative and productive research-based commissions in CIB. It focuses on the utilization of performance metrics in the delivery of construction services. The home for W117 is the Performance Based Studies Research Group (PBSRG) at Arizona State University (ASU) in Tempe, Arizona, where W117 and ASU-PBSRG hold their annual Best Value Conference. From its start in 2009, W117 was led by Prof. Dean Kashiwagi (ASU), and his group of innovators (Dr. Kenneth Sullivan, Sylvia Romero, John Savicky and Dr. Jacob Kashiwagi) and co-coordinator, Professor Charles Egbu, (Glasgow Caledonian University). In 2016, W117 was joined by Co-Coordinator Prof. Sicco Santema, (University of Technology, Delft, Netherlands) the visionary who led to the proliferation of the W117 technology in the Netherlands.
 W117 aims to change construction procurement and stakeholder organizations worldwide through the use of the information-based Best Value Approach (BVA). As such, it differs from most CIB Commissions that are more science driven, while W117 is more concept and impact driven. It has been one of the most successful CIB Commissions in bridging the gap between the construction industry practice and academic research. It has been prolific in publishing and running research tests with industry partners. W117 and PBSRG have published over 300 papers and generated licensed technology (47 licenses from AZTech, the licensing body of ASU for intellectual property rights). It is the most licensed technology from the most innovative university in the U.S. (as rated by U.S. News and World Report (2016).

Measuring project management performance is complex and requires tools to capture the dynamic nature of the processes involved. Since the conception of system dynamics in the 1950s, the method has been used to solve complex projects. Project management possesses dynamic characteristics that involve planning, human resources, implementation, and control elements; thereby, using system dynamics to measure project management performance is a realistic approach. A research study was conducted using system dynamics to develop project management performance measures to capture the complexity of the process in local government agencies. The research approach considers measuring project engineering management performance as a holistic system influenced by leadership involvement, project management processes, and project engineering manager’s ability. The Zachman architectural framework was used to develop the project-management performance system’s ontology as the system dynamics model’s foundation. A case study was conducted for three cities with local government agencies to better understand the model components and factors that influence performance. Leadership involvement, project management processes, and project manager abilities were identified as critical factors that influence the project management performance level. To validate the results of the case study, the project management performance was further studied for the City of El Paso in terms of capability, capacity, and maturity level. The research study concluded that system dynamics is a feasible method and effective tool to measure management performance for engineering projects at local government agencies.

Applying complexity theory tenets, the study here provides a unique asymmetric modeling perspective for examining causal conditions indicating high (low) project management performance (PMP). Complexity theory tenets include (tenet 1) recognizing that the causal conditions resulting in high PMP frequently have different components (i.e., ingredients) than the causal conditions resulting in low PMP—adopting this perspective supports the usefulness of asymmetric rather than the currently pervasive symmetric approach to theory construction and empirical modeling. A second complexity theory tenet is that the same causal condition can foster, be irrelevant, or inhibit high PMP, depending on how it is configured with other causal conditions—thus, high knowledge management effectiveness (KME) by itself is neither a sufficient nor a necessary causal condition for indicating all cases of high PMP. A third tenet is that the disparate configurations of causal conditions are equifinal in leading to adoption. The study here constructs a general model and specific configurational propositions that include social capital, project management types, processes, and complexity as causal conditions indicating case outcomes of high versus low PMP. The study includes examining the model and propositions empirically using survey data on the causal conditions for completed projects (n = 302, US sample of product and service industrial firms). The findings support the perspective that high (as well as low) PMP depends on combination effects—not the additive or net effects of causal conditions. For project managers, adopting a configurational approach to the study of project outcomes can reveal which combinations of causal conditions consistently lead to high PMP as well as which combinations indicate low PMP and the conditions when high KME associates with low PMP.

Adopting the multidimensional balanced scorecard approach to improve project management and organizational performance can help reduce project risks and potential disasters in order to maximize the investment benefits and security of IT projects with high risks. We adopted the stimulus-organism-response (S-O-R) research context, whose stimulus, organism, and response refer to project risk, project management, and organizational performance, respectively. Furthermore, a questionnaire survey of project management experts was conducted. We then utilized the DANP model, which combines the Decision-Making Trial Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) and the analytical network process, to explore the relationships among project risks, project management, and organizational performance. We observed the following: (a) effective project management can reduce project risk and improve organizational performance; (b) project risk is most influenced by the user; (c) senior manager support significantly influences project management; (d) organizational learning and growth has a significant impact on organizational performance; and (e) the criteria with the largest relative weight is generally considered to pose a risk, which indicates that the experts seriously consider that project risk. Our results can provide a valuable reference for project management to reduce risk and improve organizational performance.

Project Management Maturity Models (PMMM) are considered practical tools to deal with poor Project Management (PM) performance, an issue that concerns academics and practitioners. However, the models that exist are something close to “one size fits all”. This means that those models might not be suitable for activity sectors with specific requirements, such as construction, in particular, the renovation and remodelling construction firms. The present research proposes a PMMM to assess the PM capabilities of Portuguese renovation and remodelling Project-Based Firms (PBF). To achieve this goal, the authors developed documental research, followed by exploratory research through qualitative analysis. The researchers conducted semi-structured interviews and performed a content analysis of the fully transcribed interviews. Compared with the literature review’s findings, qualitative analysis results made it possible to find closure on previous research that indicated two models to have the best fit for an assessment project on construction PBFs: the OPM3 from the PMI and the MMGP-Prado. Based on those findings, the latter has the best fit for an assessment project on construction PBF. However, the model needs adjustments to fit the Portuguese context of renovation and remodelling organisations. This article presents a new PMMM for Portuguese renovation and remodelling construction firms based on obtained results. Furthermore, regarding construction PM, this article is among the few that studied PMMM on renovation and remodelling construction companies. Unlike large construction companies, these are small organisations that academics do not target for research.

Objective - The building sector is essential to Malaysia's economic expansion. Despite its significance, large construction companies usually experience delays and project failure, affecting 95% of homebuyers due to 580 delayed projects in 2022. By February 28, 2023, 581 projects had been reported as delayed. Methodology/Technique – This study experimentally examines the relationship between effective project governance and project performance in 390 Malaysian construction companies, using a framework based on agency theory and assessed with partial least squares structured equation modeling. Finding – Benefit management serves as a mediator between project performance and effective project governance, and top management support has a positive moderating influence. Novelty – The study highlights the importance of preventive measures, enhancing team and project manager roles, and forming strategic alliances for improved project governance. Type of Paper: Empirical JEL Classification: H60, H61, M10, M11. Keywords: Effective project governance; project management risk; benefit management; top management support; project performance. Reference to this paper should be referred to as follows: Abdullah, F.C.B; Indiran, L; Krishnan, A; Pavithran, S.N. (2024). The Impact of Moderation Analysis Between Effective Project Governance and Project Performance Management in Malaysia’s Construction Industry, GATR-Global J. Bus. Soc. Sci. Review, 12(3), 114–124. https://doi.org/10.35609/gjbssr.2024.12.3(2)

Experience with Best Value Procurement in Norwegian Infrastructure Projects

In order to strengthen the cooperation ability between the owner and the consultant and improve the project management performance of the whole process engineering consulting, this study firstly introduces knowledge sharing as a mediator variable and constructs a theoretical model between trust and contract governance—knowledge sharing—project management performance. A structural equation model was then used to empirically test the questionnaire data. The results show that contract governance indirectly promotes project performance through the intermediary of explicit knowledge sharing, and trust indirectly promotes project performance through the intermediary of knowledge sharing (explicit knowledge sharing and tacit knowledge sharing). Based on the above, for further analysis of the complex antecedent configuration and improvement path that affect management performance, fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis was used for group analysis with contract governance, trust, explicit knowledge sharing, and tacit knowledge sharing as conditional variables and project management performance as the outcome variable. The results show that there are two parallel paths that can improve the whole process engineering consulting project management performance: contract governance*explicit knowledge sharing*tacit knowledge sharing→project management performance and contract governance*trust*explicit knowledge sharing→project management performance. Finally, through analysis of the research results, it is suggested that in whole process engineering consulting projects, the owner and the consultant should actively promote the willingness and behavior of the consultant to share knowledge based on therational use of trust and contract governance, to better improve project management performance.