Anatomy of a Successful Partnering Program on a Megaproject

This article describes how partnering works on the Woodrow Wilson Bridge (WWB) project. At the 50-percent point in construction, this $2.4 billion megaproject is on schedule and on budget. One of the key factors contributing to this achievement has been the partnering system used, which recognizes common interests, provides for disciplined communication, and measures team effectiveness. The time and place for identifying common interests on the project is at the initial partnering kickoff workshop. Five specific lessons learned in the course of conducting ten workshops are described in the article. Every month, or every other month, each partnering team then meets again to reassess its performance and confront the issues that have arisen. One important characteristic of every periodic WWB partnering meeting is the cheering section at the end. Telling everybody what went right during the period reinforces positive behavior and builds team spirit. The WWB project collects rating surveys immediately before each partnering meeting using an interactive feature on the project Web site, rather than at each meeting. The article describes in detail how the rating system works and what use is made of the data collected.