Investigation of supply chain relationships in the UK construction industry

Supply chain relationships are crucial to project performance and project success. Major performance improvement has been achieved through improving supply chain relationships in other sectors. Supply chain relationships in the UK construction industry have been changing in the past decade as a result of a number of initiatives such as Rethinking Construction. Therefore this topic attracts significant attention among construction researchers and practitioners. Existing studies focus on the influence of key factors on supply chain relationships. These factors mainly include objectives, trust, collaboration, communication, problem solving, risk allocation and performance improvement. A comprehensive review of existing literatures is first carried out in this paper. Then a framework is developed to assess the level of supply chain relationships. Finally, how to use this framework is carefully discussed in a systematic manner.