Here’s What It Takes to Run A Successful Joint Venture Project

Towering 80-story skyscrapers. 70,000-seat stadiums. Sprawling, multi-tower apartment complexes. 

There are some projects that are just too ambitious for any one firm to handle alone; projects where even resource-rich GCs need a partner.

Joint Venture (JV) projects pool the skills, experience, and resources of two or more contractors to make the impossible, possible.

But, without a unified system, what should be a shared win can turn into a quiet tug-of-war over whose version of the truth gets used.

So, what does it take to make a JV succeed? And how can cloud-based preconstruction tools simplify it all?

Keep reading.

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Why Joint Ventures work — and why they don’t

There are a number of reasons why joint ventures are formed. 

1. Balanced risk. Put all your eggs in one GC’s basket, and the exposure is enormous. A JV spreads that risk across multiple firms.
2. Specialized expertise. Every contractor brings their own expertise, allowing for a “divide and conquer” approach.
3. Market reach. Collaborating with another firm can open doors to new clients, regions, or contract opportunities.
   
   

But, upsides considered, the reality is often messy. 

Uniting two firms means marrying two sets of tools, two estimating methods, and two versions of “the truth”. 

What it comes down to is a struggle for alignment.

A study from Advances in Civil Engineering explored this and found that this “lack of communication, understanding, and mutual trust” is one of the biggest reasons why JV projects outright fail.

‍James Pease, the VP of UCSF Health Capital Projects, told us this very issue resulted in over $50M dollars in inconsistencies, double-ups, and unnecessary items for his capital projects.

“On large projects, where we’re compiling estimates from over 100 different companies, consolidating everything into one system is a nightmare," he says. 

"We need a platform where everyone can contribute to the estimate at the same time, so we’re not left with these black boxes that contractors disappear into." — James Pease, VP of UCSF Health Capital Projects

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Now, cloud-based tech, by definition, makes everything accessible and collaborative from everywhere.

There, “black boxes” don’t exist…

Where Joint Ventures finally work as one

When AEC users are put onto the cloud, it’s shown to increase active collaboration by tenfold. 

And for joint venture projects — where alignment is the biggest challenge — the potential impact is irrefutable.

‍Colby Ajoku, Director of Integrations at Ediphi, has led the charge in building what he considers to be the ultimate “open platform cloud solution for JVs”.

For its collaborative approach to preconstruction, its deep integrations with tools like Join, and, most importantly, its ability to meet the unique demands of each joint venture.

It’s scrapiness. 

“At Ediphi, we can steer the ship in any way you need to go,” he says, “If client A comes and wants a particular use case, something proprietary and specific, and client B wants to hand select something else, we have enough tools in our tool belt to get it done.”

What do those tools look like? We’re glad you asked.

• Seeded, customizable environments. Colby’s team at Ediphi spins up unique project environments for JVs based on the hand-pick data from each firm. Historical estimates from here, project templates from there; it’s all custom to you. 
• Cross-pollinated user access. Contractors from different firms can be added into the same interface and collaborate in real time, with secure, single-sign-on access. Updates happen simultaneously and everyone sees the same dataset. 
• Selective data integration. The data team at Ediphi thinks of themselves as “data surgeons”. Meaning, JVs have support in pulling only the most relevant portions of cost models, templates, or historical data from each partner to create curated datasets specific to each project. 

“We can take bits and pieces from everywhere, really,” Colby says. 

• And, of course, it’s all cloud-based. Every estimate, assumption, and scenario is visible to all partners, reducing “black box” problems where individual teams work in isolation. 

In many ways, the secret collaborative, multi-million-dollar JVs are the tools you use to unite them. 

If you’re curious about moving away from reactive preconstruction into proactive project planning, request a demo of Ediphi.

We’ll end with a Colby guarantee:

“Whatever you need to facilitate your JV, we can provide.” — Colby Ajoku, Director of Integrations at Ediphi