Developing Capabilities for Public Construction Clients

Paper in proceeding, 2014

Clients in the public sector face a large number of challenges in designing, procur-ing and managing major construction projects in a manner that is conducive to the organization’s overall goals. The role of the client in bringing about successful project completion has more recently been emphasized with a growing number of studies focusing on developing dynamic client capabilities that facilitate the han-dling of a project through all of its different phases. Though the capabilities of the client carries immense importance in all con-struction projects, the importance is further exacerbated by the sheer scale of the projects involved in major construction projects, a development which has prompted governmental agencies to inquire into ways to improve processes in the client organization. To address such inquiries, this paper which is based on a literature review, ex-plores the types of dynamic capabilities that emerge with respect to public con-struction clients and in particular, if and how a specific client capability influences a specific project outcome. The mapping of capabilities constitutes a theoretical foundation for a forthcoming empirical study on the same topic.