Government savings through partnering: A federal lands highway initiative

Federal Lands Highway (FLH), a unit of the federal Highway Administration, provides highway engineering services to federal land managing agencies to build America's scenic highways. Since 1988, FLH has been systematically implementing total quality management (TQM). A key component of that effort has been its partnering initiative. This has been used to reduce the traditional adversarial relationship between FLH and its contractors by allowing them to jointly discuss and reach mutual agreement on the overall goals of projects before disputes arise. Since costs are reduced and disputes avoided through such arrangements, partnering is a technique that all public-sector contract administrators should take under serious consideration.