Continuity and Change in Construction Procurement

Abstract

This short history describes the evolution of procurement in the building and construction industry, from the early modern system of craft production in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the emergence of the general contractor and the professions with modern methods of procurement in the nineteenth century. Procurement here is the commissioning or purchasing of buildings and structures, and any associated supplies and services required, by a client that pays for the work. A historical review is useful because there is a surprising, and often not well-recognized, continuity in the methods used and problems found. While ideas like competitive tendering, enforceable contracts, subcontracting and measurement of costs with a bill of quantities are now widespread and common, this was not the case 200 years ago and these innovations came with the industrial revolution that began in England in the eighteenth century. In other countries, especially the US and elsewhere in Europe, the details of their history of procurement are different, but the methods of tendering, contracting and the professions that emerged in England around the turn of the eighteenth century became the basis of the modern system of construction procurement.