The anatomy of alliance

The paper examines the experience of alliance or collaborative contracting in oil and gas engineering and construction industries over the last five years. To give this complex subject some coherence and shape, the analogy of the human body has been adopted. The paper reviews the different types of alliance structure, how the parties to the alliance are built into it, how the alliance (body) works and how successful this approach has been. The paper continues by using some research from MSc dissertations from Cranfield University to give commentary on the perceived effectiveness of alliances and looks at how an alliance or partnership develops over its lifespan, particularly, the response to the change process (body growth). Lastly aspects of the alliance performance are examined (body fitness). The general conclusion is drawn that despite the diverse interpretations of alliance, the perceived benefits are real and participants are staunchly defensive of the alliance(s) in which they are involved and believe that there are both performance and commercial benefits over traditional adversarial/hard money contracting