Preparing for Successful Collaborative Contracts

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The authors of the article raise the relevant research topic, namely the interaction and consistency of all parties in coordinating any projects in construction. The authors conducted extensive research (interviews, public discussions, seminars). Thanks to this, the projects were divided into several groups in terms of complexity, which made it possible for the authors to investigate the risks that the project owner carries.
However, the authors in their article rely on methods that they know, although there is a "game theory" method, to solve such studies, you could see the authors of the Sochi model methodology developed by G.A. Ugolnitsky.

Author Response

Thank you for this supportive comment.

Game theory: Thank you for pointing out to us this possible direction for future research. Game theory is indeed an interesting and relevant direction. For this research it is not possible to go this way, given that our methodology is not designed to produce a dataset that matches this kind of theory.

We hope you find the changes made makes this paper clearer and stronger.  

Reviewer 2 Report

From my standpoint, the paper is compelling, displaying a good argumentative structure. 

Specifically, the conceptual framework is well-developed, new references are present which makes the content topical and relevant.

The methodology is articulate and describes the method, procedure and techniques with accuracy. Likewise, the results are presented according to the pre-established main research themes. The discussion of the findings is pertinent and covers the paramount aspects.

However, I would recommend that the authors better approach the research and practical implications of their study, laying emphasis on the originality and added value of their work.

Best of luck with the revision!

Author Response

Thank you for these supportive comments.

Research and practical implications: We have revised the text and made the research - and practical implications more explicit and clearer in the concluding sections. Thanks for pointing that out.

Thanks for your support.

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper entitled “Preparing for successful collaborative contracts” deals with a very interesting topic. I appreciate the aims of this work; it is quite interesting and informative to most readers of this field such as PhD students and might have some interest by practitioners.

However, the following comments need to be considered while revising the paper:

• Overall, the paper has included interesting ideas but is very hard to follow. The paper lacks structure and a clear flow.
• The introduction is mixed with a short literature review. The literature review must be better contextualized and be more convincing. To be valid, this paper must include a proper analysis of the relevant literature and then make a comparison with the authors' approach. For instance, the authors should organize all the reviewed manuscripts in a table and compare the difference between these manuscripts and this study.
• There are too many concepts that are loosely connected between them, and the authors need to clarify them. For instance, Why collaborative and not cooperative contracts?
• The structure (outline) of the paper could be given at the end of the introductory chapter 1
• In the Materials and Methods section, I recommend that the authors include an explanatory diagram of the qualitative methodology followed, in which the authors could enumerate every step taken in their approach in a summary way.
• The authors should provide more details about the contents of Figure 1 and Figure 2.
• What are implications for theory and practice? What are the managerial implications from this research? How decision or policy makers could benefit from this study. The authors should convince the readers of this journal, that their contribution is so important. Please try to extend the discussion on these issues. I believe the authors can make a stronger contribution out of the conducted study.
• The main contribution of this paper should be compared with other similar empirical studies.
• As usual a final thorough proof-reading is recommended

I would however encourage the authors to pursue his efforts in improving the paper for future publication since the topic of the research is highly relevant.

Author Response

Thank you for this supportive comment.

There is always room for improvement. We have reconsidered the text and structure throughout and made changes. The template of the journal limits the choices we have on structuring the paper, but we hope you find it is better now.

Introduction: The template of the journal dictates this mix. We agree that these two elements could be clearer if not mixed.

For this particular paper, the introduction is building up a framework of concepts for our analysis, as well as giving an overview of previous research to build on. We do not find that there is a need for a systematic literature review to argue the need for this empirical research.

Setting up the reviewed literature as a table is often a good way of presenting it. In this case we consider it not adequate because we would have to comment on the findings therein anyway, and thus a table would take up unnecessary space. Instead we have introduced sub-headings in the introduction and discussion to clarify the structure.

Loose connections: We have added more text to link the concepts. Hopefully it is clearer now. The choice of words comes from the line of literature we are building on. However, a clarification on collaborative vs cooperative is added. 

Outline of the paper is added at the end of the introduction.

Materials and methods: An explanatory diagram is added to the methods section.

Figure 1 and 2: More details are added to the text explaining Figure 1 and 2.

Implications: We have revised the text and made the research - and practical implications more explicit and clearer. We added a section to the concluding part on research - and practical implications. 

Main contribution - compare with other studies: Thank you for this suggestion. We have considered it carefully. There are several directions we could take this:

• There are many articles comparing different delivery models – but that is not relevant here.
• There are many articles specifically describing and discussion collaborative models (as well as transactional models of course). These are not relevant either, we are looking at the consequence of this choice, not the choice itself.
• There are articles describing different forms of procurement processes (like Best Value Procurement, Negotiations, Competitive dialogue etc.). These are closer to what we address in this paper, and thus could be deemed relevant.

All in all, the problem is that there is no way of pursuing any of these directions fully, without opening up a whole new section and probably add a new research question. So, instead we chose to add a short paragraph on procurement processes with a set of relevant references to show we are well ware of this.  

Proof-reading is done. 

Thank you for your supportive comments.

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper has significantly improved as compared to the previous version. Indeed, the authors made an effort to improve it and the main weaknesses are solved. Thus, in my opinion, the paper is recommendable for publication.