Page 412 - Global Project Management Handbook

CHAPTER 20

PARTNERING IN PROJECTS

J. Rodney Turner
The Lille School of Management, France, and University of Limerick, Ireland

Rodney Turner is professor of project management at the Lille
Graduate School of Management and the Kemmy Business School
at the University of Limerick. He is also an adjunct professor at the
University of Technology Sydney, adjunct professor at Educatis
University, Zurich, and visiting professor at Henley Management
College, United Kingdom.
He studied engineering at Auckland University and did his doctorate
at Oxford University, where he was also for two years a postdoctoral
research fellow. He worked for six years for ICI as a mechanical engi-
neer and project manager on the design, construction, and mainte-
nance of a heavy process plant and for three years with Coopers and
Lybrand as a management consultant.
Professor Turner is the author or editor of nine books, including
The Handbook of Project-based Management, the best-selling book
published by McGraw-Hill, and the Gower Handbook of Project
Management. He is editor of the International Journal of Project
Management (since May 1993) and has written articles for journals,
conferences, and magazines. He lectures on and teaches project
management worldwide.
From 1991 to 2004, Professor Turner was a member of council of
the United Kingdom’s Association for Project Management (APM),
with two years as treasurer and two as chairman. He is now a vice
president. From 1999 to 2002, he was president and then chairman of
the International Project Management Association (IPMA), the global
federation of national associations in project management, of which
APM is the largest member. He has also helped to establish the

Benelux Region of the European Construction Institute as foundation
operations director. Professor Turner is director of several small to
medium enterprises (SMEs) and a member of the Institute of
Directors. Professor Turner is also a fellow of the Institution of
Mechanical Engineers and a member of the Institute of Directors.

Turner and Müller (2004) have shown that better performance is obtained on projects
if the client and contractor work together in a spirit of partnership, whereby they cooper-
ate to achieve a mutually beneficial outcome, rather than each try to do better at the
other’s expense. The best results are obtained if the project is organized so that the goals
of all parties are aligned and thus can work together rationally to achieve mutually con-
sistent results. This is good practice on all projects, but where a formal contract exists
between the client and the contractor, a form of contract is needed that encourages coop-
erative working. An approach called partnering is suggested to achieve this (Scott, 2001;
ECI, 2003). Partnering is not appropriate on all projects, only on those where the client

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