Collaborative business relationships: a means to an end of construction disputes or fuel for the fire?

Collaboration under BS11000 provides an opportunity for clients, designers, contractors and other parties to construction projects to come together from a very early stage and form relationships in advance of any actual physical work being carried out on site. With the introduction of a standard for collaborative business relationships which defines the processes, this paper aims to investigate how contractual relationships can be supported by building a collaborative working relationship underpinned by BS11000 and, if, by building these relationships, disputes that would traditionally arise out of construction contracts can be resolved between the parties before they become a dispute or whether the parties to a construction contract are lulled into a false sense of security where they are more relaxed in the relationship, failing to take due cognisance of the terms and conditions of the contract until a dispute has crystallised and they find that the required supporting information is not available. The findings of the investigation indicate that for collaborative relationships to be successful under the BS11000 standard, the Relationship Management Plan (RMP) plays a significant role in the process of preventing issues crystallising into disputes if properly implemented.