Multi-national consortium based projects: improving the process

Abstract An increasingly significant feature of large projects is the internationalisation of project consortia formed for the purpose of elaborating an offer and, if successful, subsequently delivering the project. This trend coincides with the increasing preference of customers for fixed price, turnkey contract arrangements. This combination—an international consortium working with a fixed price contract—presents challenges that stretch traditional project management methods to the limit. This paper argues that a ‘process’ approach is required for the improved sale and execution of large international projects. The paper reviews some of the main problems experienced by multi-national, multi-company consortia, proposes a set of guidelines by which the task of the consortium might be smoothed through the project life-cycle, and introduces the role of an ‘independent facilitator’ as part of the project improvement process.

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