A study on motives for forming an international partnering and problems affecting the project management process in construction projects: A case study on transportation projects

The definition of risk in the construction industry is a multi-sided concept. Day by day the projects in the construction industry are getting bigger, more complex and thereby, require technical expertise. Along with the fundamental risks, the increasing sizes of the projects and the risks that occur due to their complexity make it harder for the contractors to undertake the aforesaid risks by using their own resources. Therefore the companies prefer to form partnerships in order to merge their industrial powers. Every construction project has its own aspects, therefore is managed by their own project management which were developed to satisfy the individual nature of the construction projects. The first priority of the partnership of the construction firms is to achieve profit by setting their means to complete the project successfully. However, every company in the partnership wants to run the whole management according to its own procedure and company culture which results in making different decisions for the problems. These different decisions cause some problems between the parties. Due to the fact that the transportation constructions require advanced technology and have wide range scope and strategic importance they come at the beginning of the construction projects undertaken by partnership. This study aims to find out the reasons why contractors prefer to form partnership and the problems encountered in the project management process. Based on a detailed literature research, international partnerships for contractors are defined, the reasons why contractors choose to form partnerships are examined and also the kinds of partnership are briefly explained. A questionnaire was carried out with professionals who have worked in eight transportation projects determined. The results of the questionnaire are evaluated by using "SPSS 20.0" statistics data analysis program. Finally, fifteen reasons that caused the contractors to form partnerships and twenty problems occurring in the project management process were found. In the light of the findings from the evaluation, some recommendations are developed for solving these problems. Keywords: International construction partnership, joint venture, consortium, project management, transportation project