597 THE DEVELOPMENT OF A CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT FRAMEWORK FOR LONG-TERM PARTNERING RELATIONSHIPS A.D. Ibrahim and A.D.F. Price Department of Civil and Building Engineering, Loughborough University, Loughborough, Leicestershire LE11 3TU. Email: A.D.Ibrahim@lboro.ac.uk ABSTRACT: The sub-optimal performance of the global construction sector in the last two decades has led to its scrutiny. Accordingly, improvements in the efficiency and competitiveness of the industry through reforms in contracting, tendering, design process, and other areas had been advocated. This consequently led to steady flow of research, reports and analyses on the nature of the industry, its various components, systems and structures. One of the key findings is the effective use and management of inter-organisational project teams in enhancing project success, thereby resulting in enormous interest in collaborative approaches such as partnering. However, when new initiatives and techniques are introduced, the challenges of quantifying their impact on performance improvement arise. The difficulty of the evaluation increases with complexity, duration and multitude of parties involved in the procurement process. This paper aims at describing the methodology proposed for a PhD research underway to develop a continuous improvement framework for long-term partnering relationships. The methodology adopted for the research is a hypothetico-deductive approach that comprises of two main stages. First, the framework is conceptualised from the synthesis of literature and preliminary interviews while the second stage involves the empirical testing of the framework using triangulated methods for collecting and analysing data. The framework will consider the complete whole life cycle of a construction project; planning and design, construction and operational stages. Keywords - continuous improvement, hypothetico-deductive, long-term partnering, NHS LIFT, research methodology. 1. INTRODUCTION The global construction industry has been under intense scrutiny in the last 20 years, and this is set to continue as owners and users demand better value for money from a more sustainable built environment. ECI (2003) reported that the traditional arrangements for delivering long- term contracts in the UK seldom achieve best value and repeatedly fail to facilitate continuous improvement in both client and contractor performance. This is because cost and performance are driven by market forces rather than a sharing of risks, opportunities and objectives between the parties. As a result, improvements in the efficiency and competitiveness of the industry through reforms in contracting, tendering, design process, quality management, productivity, training, education and other areas have been advocated. One of the key findings in the many research efforts is the effective use and management of inter-organisational project teams in enhancing project success (Abudayyeh, 1994; Albanese, 1994). Propagated by this enormous interest is the emergence of ‘partnering’, which is purported to be the major agent of change within the construction industry, focussed on eschewing traditional adversarial relationships between project parties to encourage relationships based on the principles of trust, mutual respect and cooperation towards the achievement of a common goal (Warne, 1994; CIRIA, 1999). Although it seems that the very essence of partnering is to provide platform for the contracting parties to continuously improve their performance for mutual satisfaction and benefits (Bennett and Jayes, 1995),