Circular Public Procurement through Integrated Contracts in the Infrastructure Sector

Sofia Lingegård, Malena I. Havenvid and Per-Erik Eriksson
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Sofia Lingegård: Department of Sustainable Development, Environmental Science and Engineering, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden
Malena I. Havenvid: Department of Real Estate and Construction Management, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, 100 44 Stockholm, Sweden
Per-Erik Eriksson: Department of Civil, Environmental and Natural Resources Engineering, Luleå University of Technology, 971 87 Luleå, Sweden

Sustainability, 2021, vol. 13, issue 21, 1-19

Abstract: Public clients’ procurement strategies are central in facilitating innovation towards sustainability. In the infrastructure sector, the three main project activities—design, production, and maintenance—are traditionally not procured in an integrated way, which results in sub-optimizations and a lack of life cycle perspective. As project actors are accustomed to traditional, non-integrated forms of contract, implementing integrated contracts imposes fundamental changes to the interdependencies among actors, resources, and activities. This study analyzes the interfaces among key project actors and the related interdependencies across design, production, and maintenance in Design–Build–Maintain contracts, and initiates a discussion on how to manage these interdependencies when implementing integrated contracts. This study of circular public procurement (CPP) focused on three infrastructure projects using integrated contracting and applied the industrial network approach (INA) to analyze interdependencies in how they may influence innovation and sustainable development. The study found significant obstacles to clients obtaining the benefits of integrated contracting and concludes that understanding interdependencies is necessary to implement integrated contracts successfully. The study contributes to the construction management literature by adapting the INA to contracting, and to the CPP literature by providing empirical evidence of sustainability and circularity in infrastructure projects.

Keywords: circular public procurement; interdependencies; integrated contracts; design–build–maintain; infrastructure projects; industrial network approach; sustainability; life cycle perspective; sustainable public procurement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
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