Feeding the hand that bites

But the Japanese didn't seem to realize the principle was universal. It wasn't unusual at all for them to save money, deliver on time and have zero defects – all at once.

"They didn't just hand over on the scheduled day, they handed over on the scheduled hour," Bennett said. "And everything worked."

Bennett, who became director of the Centre for Strategic Studies in Construction at the University of Reading, spent a long time in Japan working out how they did it. He wrote Trusting the Team in 1995 and The Seven Pillars of Partnering in 1998, and became the first in the UK to articulate the principles of partnering. Sir Michael Latham spent a day with him while preparing his 1994 report.

The Japanese partnered, though we might not recognise it as such. According to Bennett, they didn't practice open-book accounting, or declare expected profits. But only because they don't need to. Information flows so freely in Japan that everybody already knows what it'll cost, for example, to build a distribution warehouse to such-and-such specifications. There's practically no such thing as trade secrets.

"Ask any factual question, they'll look it up in a book and tell you. It cuts out arguments," he said.

We're a long way from that in the UK, where if you want to be serious about sharing information you write it in the contract.

However, partnering has taken root in the UK and it looks like it's going to grow. PPC2000, the first dedicated partnering contract, first published in September 2000 by the Association of Consultant Architects, sold like hotcakes in 2001 – up to 600 per month, according to the ACA. It has slowed to a steady 200 per month now and John Wright, a former ACA president who takes credit for the idea of PPC2000 (it was drafted by David Mosey of solicitors Trowers and Hamlins), says there is now £2bn worth of construction administered by PPC2000 contracts, most of it for housing associations. Wright admits this is a crude estimate. Because it sells the form, the ACA knows roughly who's using it and for what.

Even if £2bn is accurate, it doesn't account for work undertaken with the NEC Option X12 form, or the JCT Partnering Practice Note 4, or the customised contracts solicitors around the country regularly cobble together on demand.

One well-known contractor who is supposedly steeped in partnering is, by and large, dreadful. Everyone from the contracts manager down is just appalling

The point is, partnering is here.

Smaller contractors and subcontractors may greet this news with dismay. For a lot of them partnering has meant watching the main contractor cosy up to the client, only to turn around and apply the screws with greater vigour and a moralistic vocabulary to boot. One construction manager told us he had to stop using the P-word among subcontractors, even on jobs that were in fact project partnerships.

This is the one barrier preventing partnering from changing the culture of British construction. At the moment, there's nothing in it for the supply chain. The main contractor enjoys the benefits — ring-fenced profit, shared information, cost reimbursement, generous incentives, guaranteed work, a seat at the design table. Only the obligations get passed downstream – the pressure to innovate and forever to improve safety, cost, speed and quality.

For many subcontractors it feels like they're subsidising the main contractor's experiment in partnering – feeding the hand that bites, in other words.

This barrier could start coming down in March when the ACA publish a version of PPC2000 designed for the subcontract. It mirrors the original PPC2000 form and should leave no excuse for clients and main contractors for not rolling out partnering down the whole supply chain.

Back to John Wright, who is also chair of the Construction Industry Council's Partnering Task Force, the main driver for the new contract. He says that in hindsight it might have been better to hang on to PPC2000 until a subcontract version was ready, because at the moment subcontractors don't know what their position is in the main contract. That has made them vulnerable and suspicious because a proportion of the majors are talking the talk but not walking the walk.

"Our experience with the nationals has been bloody awful," he said. "One well-known contractor whom I won't name and who is supposedly steeped in partnering is by and large dreadful. Everyone from the contracts manager down is just appalling."

Local pressure to partner
Partnering is here to stay mostly because clients want it, especially public sector clients. There has been a lot of press about prime contracting at the MOD and Procure21 at the NHS. Both programmes have strong partnering elements. But even at the humble local authority level, the pressure is on to partner.

The contractors on our approved list were all capable of doing the work the council needs doing. But when the going gets tough some will step back and look after themselves first

The Local Government Act 1999 released councils from their obligation to use lowest-price tendering and obliged them instead to get "best value", which is generally defined as a balance between up-front costs, whole-life costs and functionality. They'll be tested on this, too, by the Audit Commission. If they fail, they'll be replaced by government-appointed management teams. It's a bit far-fetched, but still, it isn't a comforting thought.

The Audit Commission is quick to point out that it doesn't prescribe partnering, although it will suggest it.

"Lowest-price tendering is not illegal," says Abdool Kara, the Audit Commission's housing inspectorate operations manager. "It's just that the Local Government Act freed up councils to take quality into account for the first time.

"For instance, there are many, many ways that traditional repair and maintenance contracts could be better drawn up and monitored. Often it's about just being cleverer in using and collecting data."

Still, many local authorities have decided on partnering as the best route to best value. Take Durham County Council. Alan Ostle, business manager for Durham's environment and technical services department, maintains you can't achieve best value by any other means. He's a true convert to partnering anyway, but he admits there is a distinct pressure from central government. For example, councils will have to bid for their money from a new Single Capital Pot, and Ostle says that in order to be successful they'll have to demonstrate Rethinking Construction principles.

"There's no bogeyman. The pressures aren't that direct. People can muddle along, but these things do bite in the end," he said.

With local authorities adopting partnering and working toward five-year framework agreements, local contractors will run up against a concept they may have thought would never break out of the breakfast seminar. If they can't partner, they could find themselves out of the loop when it comes to public sector work.

Culture shock
Almost two decades after his visit to Japan, which started the partnering ball rolling in the UK, the now-retired Prof John Bennett is cautiously hopeful that partnering will overtake traditional methods, that its basic principles will eventually permeate the culture of British construction.

"I'm an optimist," he said. "Once people try it and see what they can do with it, they find they can work better and they enjoy it more."