The integrated collaborative environment and its value to the procurement process in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

The high level of uncertainty in the delivery of construction projects in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, is due to lack of understanding of client requirements and needs. The current collaborative working environment between clients and the contractors needs to be strengthened in order to address this and provide an integrated collaborative environment that is required to improve the procurement processes to add value to the project delivery. This study was undertaken in the lens of interpretivist paradigm. Also, this research presents a comprehensive review of prior studies and suggests a direction for the study in Saudi Arabia. Many studies propose that collaborative work can produce more successful project management of construction projects in many contexts, but this is still a quite under researched topic in Saudi Arabia. The results reveal that the current collaborative way of working is not sufficient to support an effective procurement process. Misunderstanding of this collaborative work working resulted in confusion of applying an integrated collaborative environment in Saudi construction industry. By using integrated collaborative environment both the client and the contractor can enhance those decisions which positively impact the project life cycle. Furthermore, problem solving is important in assisting the understanding of the role of team members’ cooperation to achieve the intended goal of the procurement process. © 2018 The Authors. Published by Diamond Congress Ltd. Peer-review under responsibility of the scientific committee of the Creative Construction Conference 2018.