Value-based analysis of the negotiation for the construction of a church dome

Abstract

In the construction industry, the signing of contracts between contractors and clients is a common practice. The entities signing these contacts have vastly different objectives in the context of the project: the contractor is motivated by the achievement of profit, while the client has objectives that can be economic, aesthetic, related to completion time, etc. According to negotiation theory, the greater the difference between the objectives of the sides, the better the contracts that can be achieved in the negotiation. Therefore, the analysis of a contractor-client negotiation in the building industry should be based on a complete understanding on the objectives of the sides. Kenney’s Value-Focused Thinking (VFT) provides a framework on which such understanding can be achieved. This paper presents a VFT based methodology to analyze the contractor-client negotiations in the context of construction projects. The methodology is illustrated by analyzing, in retrospective, the negotiation between a construction company and a client, regarding the construction of a dome for a church. The results show the usefulness of analyzing the negotiation from the point of view of the sides’ objectives.