Why alliance contracting needs digital discipline

An alliance manager is also appointed to oversee day-to-day operations and lead the integrated project team.

Significantly, some mechanisms that sit within secondary options under other NEC4 contracts become fundamental elements of PAC. These include early contractor involvement (governed by Secondary Option X22 under standard ECC contracts) and KPIs, covered by Option X20. Early supply chain participation and performance monitoring are therefore built into the model rather than treated as optional additions.

By embedding these mechanisms, PAC establishes a structured, two-stage delivery model that places every party in a collective and transparent environment from the outset. Early involvement and aligned decision-making are not merely encouraged – they are built in as fundamental pre-construction requirements.

Parties work towards shared outcomes rather than administering a series of separate bilateral relationships. Pre-construction collaboration covers areas such as design development, planning, risk management and delivery strategy, with the integrated delivery team expected to behave as one project organisation.

This represents a considerable cultural shift. PAC creates the contractual conditions for genuine collaboration, but a contract cannot produce collaborative behaviour on its own.

Its success will depend on project teams establishing the digital systems, information discipline and commercial transparency needed to administer a multi-party agreement consistently.

The Construction Playbook promotes the use of digital technologies to support effective contract management. In the case of PAC, a shared commercial model can only work if every party can see and trust the same information.

To realise the benefits of alliancing, cost data, decisions, risks, performance measures and contractual communications must be visible and consistently recorded.

If members maintain separate spreadsheets, email trails and conflicting versions of the truth, collaboration can quickly break down. This is a familiar problem across the industry, particularly on larger, more complex projects involving extensive supply chains.

Digital contract management therefore becomes part of the alliance’s governance, not simply an administrative convenience. It should be seen as an invisible teammate, working behind the scenes to stitch everything together, spot emerging risks, maintain visibility across the supply chain, document every formal conversation and turn project data into informed decisions.

For the alliance manager, this provides an essential operational foundation. Administering PAC effectively without a common digital environment would be extraordinarily difficult because its success depends on multiple organisations following the same processes and working from the same information.

Risk cannot be shared effectively without reliable data, so transparency must be designed into the project’s systems from the outset. A single source of truth can help the alliance manager and wider team remove information silos, establish a credible audit trail and maintain time-stamped records of Core Group decisions. Live management of the early warning register can also help the alliance identify and address risks before they affect cost or time.

Rather than replacing leadership, like any good teammate, its purpose is to ensure the right information reaches the right people at the right time.

With its strong emphasis on collaboration and the mutual trust and cooperation at the heart of NEC, PAC presents a significant opportunity. However, its impact will ultimately depend on whether clients, contractors and supply chain partners are prepared to embrace it.

There is a potential parallel with X29, the Secondary Option designed to integrate climate change requirements into NEC contracts. Despite the strength of its underlying ambition, its practical adoption and impact have so far been limited.

PAC could face the same challenge if project teams treat collaboration as a contractual aspiration rather than an everyday discipline.

Clients and contractors must embed an alliance mindset into project management if the model is to change the industry’s culture. Teams will need the skills and confidence to follow agreed processes consistently, while multi-party risk-sharing will require members to be open about performance and emerging problems.

This model will not be suitable for every project. Its greatest potential is likely to be in large, specialist or complex programmes where significant interdependencies make early collaboration and integrated decision-making particularly valuable.

PAC provides a framework through which organisations can succeed or fail together. Its success will depend on whether the industry has the trust, appetite and commercial maturity required for genuine multi-party risk-sharing.

Better outcomes will be determined by what happens beyond the contract: disciplined information management, transparent commercial behaviour and project teams prepared to operate as one alliance.

Digital compliance cannot create a collaborative culture. However, as the alliance’s invisible teammate, it can provide the shared visibility and accountability that allow that culture to work in practice.

Keep up to date with DC+: sign up for the midweek newsletter.