Sandeep Thakur

The Role of Consortium leader in the governance of Megaprojects

Research supervisors: Dr Mustafa Cidik and Dr Natalya Sergeeva
Start date: 26 September 2022

In today’s competitive business environment, there is a growing demand for involving multiple contractors in a consortium, where each contractor is allotted their scope of works and are managed simultaneously with the aim to improve management, efficiency and fast track delivery of the project.
A consortium comprises two or more contractors who combine resources and strive towards a common goal. Each consortium member operates independently within the structure and key matters such as the scope of each member’s commitment, its rights and responsibilities, and how profits and costs are to be allocated, or decisions made are dealt with through a consortium agreement signed by the members.
The chief advantage of a consortia arrangement is that it can exploit and highlight the particular strengths, experiences and competences of its members in addition to balancing risks. This can be highly attractive to a client, especially at tender evaluation stage. Even so, consortium is often created by their members through necessity rather than choice. This trend coincides with the increasing preference of clients for fixed price, lump sum contract arrangements.
This research will review some of the main problems experienced by multi-national contractors in a consortium and propose a set of guidelines by which the task of the consortium might be smoothed through the project phases of Pre-Contract, Post Contract and Project Completion through the enhanced role of consortium leader in the governance megaprojects.