Presented at the OECD expert meeting "Construction Risk Management in Infrastructure Procurement: The Loss of Appetite for Fixed-Price Contracts", held on 17 May 2023 at the OECD, Paris and online.
ECI in Sweden - A. Kadefors, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm
1. ECI in Sweden
• Building construction
• Two-stage bilateral ECI with collaboration widely used since early 2000s. Inspiration from UK
via Denmark. Since 2010 also strategic partnering.
• No standard contracts for ECI, but some models and guidelines
• Infrastructure
• Non-contractual collaborative policy developed at industry level in 2004
• Swedish Transport Administration (2010): ”pure client”, DB contracts.
• From 2015, contractors advocated collaborative contracts.
• New STA policy for ECI, <10 pilot contracts, but some (early) mixed results and backlash for
the ECI-model.
• Contractors again advocate collaboration.
• Several cancelled/reconstructed contracts with foreign low-bidding contractors.
• 2023: new ”alliance-inspired” pilots based on contacts with Finland
• Follow-ups indicate that the (still ongoing) ECI-contracts are quite successful
2. Some remarks and observations
• Weak connection between ECI and lean/IT-based construction
methods
• Little learning between building construction and infrastructure
• New pilot projects but unclear learning
• Need to align practices: Swedish engagement in ISO 44001
• Industry level institutions for learning and development are weak