Purpose: Socially responsible procurement (SRP) utilises government expenditure on construction procurement as a means of generating social value from construction activities. The paper proposes that SRP is a type of innovation delivering social value in the form of employment opportunities to local communities. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the use of SRP in Northern Ireland procurement and align the findings with existing literature.Design/methodology/approach: A three-stage approach was employed, namely, first, a review of innovation and SRP literature; second, a survey of 50 Northern Ireland construction organisations to extract perceptions of SRP in practice; and third, qualitative analysis of the literature with the empirical insights.Findings: Findings show that SRP is being driven by social legislation and being delivered by contractors as part of their contractual obligations. SRP represents a significant shift from standard construction practice which makes it challenging to implement using traditional processes and systems. It is found that SRP is generating social benefits through employment creation and the feedback from employees is largely positive. However, it is proposed that contractors need to adopt a more person-centric approach to the implementation of SRP to sustain the benefits being currently evidenced.Originality/value: The study suggests that there is an urgent need for more holistic measurement of impacts and outcomes of SRP to ensure social targets are appropriate for the communities in which projects are being constructed.

Early contractor involvement (ECI), introduced by the Highways Agency in 2001 has commenced in Northern Ireland. The first five UK ECI schemes were investigated (Nichols Report, 2007) but there was an admission of limited piloting and research. Through an online survey and case study data this paper defines for the first time the success factors of the ECI procurement route against other UK Government approved procurement routes. It further shows cost savings of £59.3 m were achieved with an average saving per scheme of £5.4 m. ECI produces less time savings. The case studies confirm in larger schemes ECI supports risk management mitigating the costs accrued. However, there is often little benefit on smaller or low risk schemes. This research shows the negative issues relating to ECI costs and timescale stated by Owen (2009) are not shared by practitioners with initial opinions and statistics on the use of ECI being very positive.

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to report the production of the key process areas (KPAs) for an e‐capability maturity model for construction organisations, based on drivers and barriers to e‐procurement.Design/methodology/approach: Previous researchers have recognised the positive consequences of possessing a model to sustain the embedment of any business process within an organisation. The capability maturity model progressed into one of the most internationally recognised since the release of the Software Capability Maturity Model (CMM) in 1991. Since then, many CMMs have been developed. This paper reports on how a CMM based on drivers and barriers to e‐procurement identified in Eadie et al. can be developed to form the KPAs in the formation of a model to gauge the maturity of an organisation in relation to e‐procurement.Findings: It was found that factor analysis could be used as a data reduction technique to reduce the 20 drivers and 32 barriers identified as being applicable to e‐procurement in construction, to 12 KPAs: Quality management system; Cost management system; Intergroup coordination; Time management system; Operational analysis; Organisational change management system; Integrated teaming; Governance management system; Requirements development; Knowledge management system; Integration management system; and Organisational environment.Originality/value: This paper provides particulars of a research project which uses factor analysis to produce a set of KPAs from the drivers and barriers identified in Eadie et al. These KPAs are then subjected to a mapping process linking them to maturity levels to develop a CMM to analyse the e‐procurement capability of construction organisations. This mapping will be reported in a later paper. This e‐readiness of organisations will indicate the current state of a construction organisation in terms of its readiness to carry out e‐procurement. The paper describes in detail the identification of the KPAs.

Purpose: Public private partnerships (PPP) and the private finance initiative (PFI) are defined as a range of practical long‐standing relationships between the public and private sectors. This paper aims to investigate managers’ perceptions of PPP/PFI in two of the three largest sectors for private sector capital‐spend in PPP/PFI schemes, namely transport (highway infrastructure) and healthcare.Design/methodology/approach: A web‐based Limesurvey™ questionnaire was used to collect data. A sample of 75 organisations was identified from the Partnerships UK (PUK) online Project Database (Partnerships UK, 2010). Total of 49 responses were received, of which 39 were complete.Findings: Results from each sector relating to PPP/PFI “best value”, advantages and disadvantages, and government preferred procurement routes, are investigated. The majority of organisations did not consider that PPP/PFI provided “best value” but thought it provided more value than the other two UK Government preferred procurement routes, “design and build” and “prime contracting”.Practical implications: This questions the UK Government's choice of preferred procurement routes. However, even during a recession and its aftermath, the majority of respondents consider that PPP/PFI remains appropriate to healthcare and transport developments.Originality/value: Firstly, this paper carries out a ranking of common advantages and disadvantages to PFI/PPP followed by an investigation of “best value” as perceived by contractors and consultants subsequent to the construction phase. Then the three preferred UK Government procurement routes are contrasted in terms of “best value” and finally the paper investigates how PPP/PFI schemes are viewed during recessionary times.