Review of Contemporary Construction Procurement Practices

Abstract

Procurement is a key process in a construction project that creates and manages contacts. Procurement activities span from identification of requirements to project closeout, making it a perfect mode for integrating organizational strategic directions. Lately, the strategic importance of procurement has been widely acknowledged by academics as well as industry professionals. Construction procurement is a complex process with a large number of available options and directions. Ad hoc statistics show that modern initiatives such as sustainability, life-cycle costing, and standardization are getting integrated with procurement. However, there is no unified view in the construction industry on procurement as a project process. This paper presents a comprehensive review of traditional and emerging procurement practices in the construction industry. The current procurement practices are analyzed by separating into three segments; processes, methods, and policies. Furthermore, strengths and weaknesses of the traditional procurement methods are reviewed in detail. As the final section, contemporary developments in construction procurement are investigated. This article consolidates detailed knowledge of construction procurement that is identified as a knowledge gap in the literature.