INNOVATION IN COLLABORATION FOR BELGIAN BUILDING PROCESSES

misbe2011 Tracking Number 141

Keywords: innovation, collaboration, partnering, comparative, Belgium Today in many of our neighbouring countries ‘working together in integrated project teams’, using groupware and BIM, is the future way of process thinking in the building practice. Everyone is convinced that ‘teams outperform individuals’! Especially when diverse skills, judgement and experiences can enhance the project’s outcome. This paper contains the first phase of a comparative study of IPD processes, ways of enhanced collaboration and communication between the different stakeholders in the supply chain of projects abroad, to solve the problems occurring in traditional construction processes used in Belgium. Before the search for solutions can start several questions need an answer first. ‘Which types of building processes are being applied in Belgium today? From which problems do stakeholders in construction suffer? Do all stakeholders understand the problems? Why do Belgians keep following these traditional processes? Are they already aware of the progress in innovative processes made in our neighbouring countries? Is there economical, professional, legal or political support for them?’ This paper is written as a part of a PhD research, which starts with an exploratory study to be able to clearly define the problems occurring in the traditional Belgian building processes. Future challenges comprise an analytical study of integrated project delivery methods used together with adjusted contracts to enhance the building processes in the Netherlands and the UK. There building teams, integrated contracts like design & build and turn-key, public private partnerships, alliances, SPE’s, … are intensively used. The restriction of the monopoly status of the architect in Belgium together with preserving at all times his incompatible relation with the contractor will be considered first. The following questions will guide the PhD research in the future: ‘Which future perspectives can Belgium have? What kind of integrated methods are successful in our neighbouring countries? Are there any possibilities to implement them within the Belgian legislation or is a profound revision inevitable? Will an evolution be enough or is a real revolution to be expected? …’