An Examination of the Effectiveness of Partnering in Navy Construction Contracts

This thesis presents an analysis of the effectiveness of partnering of construction contracts in the U. S. Naval Facilities Engineering Command. Partnering is a contract administration tool designed to foster open communications between contracting parties and avoid the traditional adversarial relationships that have become the standard over the past years. Implementation of partnering is done on a project by project basis since acquisition regulations do not allow for long term relationships between private contractors and the federal government. Successes reported in partnering have all been subjective and based on individual project performance. This thesis compares project performance of partnered and non-partnered projects. Criteria of comparison include cost growth, incidence of claims, response times for various contract requirements, value engineering savings and end of project contractual issues.