Opportunities and threats for granting more design space to road contractors

This paper describes the results of research into the contract arrangements and design processes for contractors in the road infrastructure industry. The changing institutional environment has led the industry to believe that more opportunities can be realized to the benefit of society (lower cost, higher quality, more efficient design and design process) when contractors are allowed more ´design freedom´ in their contracts with governments. We have explored the technical design space, and developed a framework to structure this space. Next, we identified, through many in-depth interviews and case studies, a number of technical, organizational, and institutional opportunities, threats and barriers for granting more design space. Finally, the paper discusses the conclusions that could be drawn from the mapping of the opportunities onto the bottlenecks, and it shows that much can indeed be gained, but that many of these opportunities for cost reduction or value improvement are hampered by large, inert institutional settings.