Improving Street Reconstruction Projects in City Centers Through Collaborative Practices

Renovation and relocation of underground utilities and renovating the streets are essential to maintain urban infrastructure. In cities, street reconstruction projects cause substantial harm to citizens in the form of traffic jams, noise, and poor access to businesses. Although some harm is unavoidable, the harm could be mitigated, for example, by decreasing overall construction durations. We used design science research to diagnose the current state of street reconstruction projects in the City of Helsinki and to develop a new model aimed at shortening project durations. The diagnosis was made based on interviews, workshops, observations, a survey, and an archival study. The identified key root causes of problems were lack of collaboration and inflexible contract forms in projects with high uncertainty. The new model was co-created with stakeholders participating in these projects, including a collaborative development phase, a shared situation picture among actors, and joint risk analysis of all parties. The study's key contribution was the way to use design science research to start a lean implementation in a challenging project type with multiple public stakeholders. The City of Helsinki will pilot and further develop the model in three street reconstruction projects.