Everyone knows that working well with contractors is critical, and yet year in and year out, many of our most difficult problems and our worst incidents involve contractors. We’ve devoted so much time and effort to getting this right, and yet we continue to struggle. What makes partnering with our contractors so difficult?  

This workshop will dive into the client-contractor relationship using a fresh lens. Rather than asking our contractors to care more, we will look at this relationship as a system issue. Attendees will describe the systemic problems that make contracting challenging, such as constraints and goal conflicts that create unique opportunities for failure. Together, we will brainstorm ideas to help us reframe the problems in ways that give us new potential solutions that attendees can try to improve the partnerships with their third-party relationships.