The Half of the Equation Nobody Talks About
When infrastructure professionals discuss progressive contracting, the conversation focuses almost entirely on the model. Which framework? CMAR or Alliance? PDB or IPD? How do you structure the GMP? What does the pain/gain sharing look like? These are important questions. They are also, in my experience, only half the question.
The other half — the half that actually determines whether the model delivers — is organizational readiness. The governance structures, decision-making culture, and stakeholder capabilities that sit behind the contract form.
I have watched a well-designed progressive contract underperform because the owner’s organization was not set up to participate collaboratively. And I have seen a relatively simple delivery model produce excellent results because the right people were empowered to make decisions quickly and held accountable for outcomes. The model matters. The organization matters more.
What Collaborative Preconstruction Actually Requires
Progressive models are built on a core assumption: that the owner, the contractor, and the designer will work together during design to share information, solve problems jointly, and make better decisions than any one party could make alone. That assumption sounds reasonable. In practice, it requires something that many organizations do not have — a governance structure that actually allows people to make decisions in real time.
If the owner’s organization requires every significant design decision to pass through three committees, two review panels, and a 60-day approval cycle, then the collaborative preconstruction phase that makes CMAR valuable becomes a bottleneck instead of an accelerator. The Construction Manager is ready to provide input. The designer is ready to iterate on design alternatives. But the owner’s internal process cannot keep pace with the tempo of collaboration that the contract is designed to produce.
I saw this firsthand on a major North American transit program. The progressive contract was well-structured. The financial model was sound. The CM had genuine preconstruction capability. But the owner’s governance framework was built for a traditional procurement environment where decisions could be sequential and deliberate. When that framework met a contract model that demanded fast, empowered, collaborative decision-making, the friction was immediate and persistent. The governance did not adapt to the contract. The contract’s potential was constrained by the governance.
The Contractor Readiness Problem
Owner governance is not the only readiness gap. The contractor matters equally. A CMAR arrangement requires a Construction Manager with genuine preconstruction expertise — not just a general contractor who wants early project access and will figure out preconstruction deliverables as they go.
Real preconstruction capability means cost estimators who can maintain an open-book rolling estimate as design evolves, constructability specialists who can review drawings critically and propose alternatives, procurement strategists who can identify long-lead risks and develop mitigation strategies, and schedule analysts who can build and maintain a construction programme that reflects how the project will actually be sequenced. When that capability is thin, the preconstruction phase becomes a billing exercise rather than a value creation exercise. The owner is paying preconstruction fees without getting preconstruction value. The result is a GMP that does not reflect reality, followed by construction phase surprises that should have been resolved during preconstruction.
The Designer’s Cultural Shift
The designer is the third party in the readiness equation. In a traditional design environment, the designer is the technical authority and the contractor is the party who builds what the designer specifies. That hierarchy does not serve a collaborative preconstruction process. The CM needs to be able to say ‘this will be very difficult to build as drawn’ and the designer needs to be willing to explore alternatives rather than defend completed design decisions.
That cultural shift — from technical authority to collaborative partner — is one that not every design firm has made, and not every project team can make it mid-project if it was not established at the beginning of preconstruction.
Assessing Readiness Before Selecting a Model
For anyone evaluating which delivery model to use on their next program, my advice is direct: spend as much time assessing your organization’s readiness to execute a progressive contract as you do assessing which progressive contract to select. The best model in the world will underperform if the stakeholders behind it are not ready.
That readiness assessment should cover decision-making authority (who can approve what, and how quickly), governance design (how will the collaborative management team be structured and empowered), procurement culture (can the owner’s procurement framework accommodate a qualifications-based selection), and organizational capacity (does the owner’s team have the bandwidth to actively participate in preconstruction).
Getting this right at the beginning is cheaper than correcting it mid-program.