Ready, steady, repeat: Unravelling repetition and its potential benefits within public construction programs

• Programs increase the likelihood of repetitive activities occurring within and across inter-related projects. • Deliberate identifying repetitive activities enables leveraging their potential benefits. • A conceptual model illustrates how repetitive activities and their potential benefits manifest in programs, ultimately contributing to the achievement of program goals. • Identifying repetitive activities can inform the design of inter-organisational programs. Global societal challenges and limited resources have intensified the need for solutions that accelerate innovation and increase productivity. Repetition, particularly in the construction industry, is widely recognised for achieving efficiency gains and cost reductions. Its realisation, however, remains challenging due to the project-based nature of the industry, which emphasises project uniqueness. In addition, repetition is fragmented across multiple organisations and its recognition is predominantly framed from an intra-organisational perspective. Inter-organisational programs offer a promising setting to enable repetitive activities by strategically bundling interdependent and similar projects. Based on a qualitative multiple-case analysis of three construction programs, the study shows how organisations can identify the potential benefits of repetitive activities earlier, leading to more efficient and effective execution of work and achievement of program goals. The study contributes to literature by providing a conceptual model explaining how repetitive activities manifest and can be leveraged and steered to realise their potential benefits.