GENERAL CONSIDERATIONS
Table 1 - The structure of the german construction industry Main Trades
Finishing Trades Structural Engineering Wall painting Building Services Installation Prefabrication Tiling Civil Engineerng Flooring Plastering Road Construction Ground Works Special Works Insulation Demolition Stucco, Plaster Joinery Roofing The construction industry in Germany includes all trades from the preparation of the site to the finished building. The official German term for this industry is Baugewerbe. Inside the construction industry there is an important discrimination between the main trades (Bauhauptgewerbe) occupied mainly with the erecting of the structure and the finishing trades (Ausbaugewerbe) (see table 1). Firms performing structural steel works only do not form part of the Baugewerbe and nor do firms specialised in services trades like climatisation or electricians. The definition of the Baugewerbe and its internal structures are the frame of reference for administrative regulation, for business or professional organisations, for training and education, for the regulation of the labour market and, last but not least, for all statistical data. Works done prior to the groundworks - e.g. architectural or engineering planning - or the lines of business which manage a building when it is ready are not classed with the construction industry.
The construction industry in Germany consists of about 100.000 to 150.000 enterprises and provides an employment of about 2.5 million. But exact statistical data is available only for the main trades. Because of the overwhelming number of very small enterprises of the finishing trades exact data is hard to get for this sector. The total construction industry represents 6.2 per cent of the gross national product and 8.3 per cent of total employment. Both numbers have decreased continually during the last 30 years and are very different between the Eastern and the Western parts of the country (e.g. the ratio of employment is 7.2 in the west and 13.2 in the east).
Roles and functions of actors differ in the German construction industry and so does their relationship. Distribution of functions, shape of roles and forms of relationship inside the construction process vary from sector to sector (i.e. housing, tunnelling, road works, repair and maintenance etc.), but also inside these sections from project to project. So to outline a traditional form of the project coalition as a frame of reference can only be done by giving a description of a typical and widespread form, while noting that many different variations can also be found. As it is with the evolution of roles and their relationship, which is far from homogeneous, so similar works can be done in different forms of project coalition and similar project coalitions can be used for different works. Even a common "leading edge" is hard to discover. This general structure and development of the German construction industry has not changed after unification. So instead of generalisation only some tendencies can be outlined, which give a flash of light on some developments inside the German construction industry, but can not represent the sector as a whole.
Although in fact there is of course a system of relationship of actors in German construction industry as well as in other countries, which defines their tasks, roles, functions, liabilities and relations and interrelations, a specific term like the English "contracting system" does not exist in Germany. Indeed Ekardt et al. (1992 p 183-9) describe a System der Baubeteiligten (System of Participants in Construction) and nearly the same expression is used by Bollmann and Vincent (1993). But this term is neither commonly used nor very meaningful. Whereas the term "contracting system" is indicating that actors are in a contractual relation to each other, emphasising that this legal aspect is important for what they are doing and how, the term System der Baubeteiligten just says, that several actors take part in a construction process.
The System der Baubeteiligten is outlined by Ekardt et al. as a pentagon of relationship formed by (1) the client, (2) the construction enterprise, (3) the independent professionals, (4) the public authorities, and (5) the public interest concerned and affected by construction projects and their results. The authors emphasize, that there is not only one single actor, which influences the technical and organisational development of the sector, but that all five actors have a certain influence, independent from each other. Ekardt et al. are right to underline this to make clear, that the predominant view of the German industrial sociology, which ascribes industrial evolution and in particular rationalisation of the production process more or less only to the action of the producing enterprise, is inadequate to analyse processes in construction. But beyond that, neither Ekardt et al. nor Bollmann and Vincent aim to investigate the System der Baubeteiligten more intensively. So some important information on the existence and the roles of actors in the construction process is provided by these authors, but a deeper analysis of the relationship between actors and its recent change is not undertaken.
This may have to do with - or may be indicated by - the fact, that in German terminology in the field of construction far fewer legal or functional terms are used, than professional ones. For example: the French term maître d’œuvre characterises one actor by his function as the overall controller of the process. The actor, who has this function in Germany, is normally named Architekt - a term, that first indicates, that he has a particular professional education and therefore a particular professional competence. Then, at a second glance to insiders it is known, that it is the Architekt, who normally has this special function of controlling the whole process on behalf of the client. That seems to be characteristic for the German way of defining concepts for indicating actors in construction. The term Architekt includes both the professional meaning as obvious notation and the functional meaning as a hidden connotation. The traditional exception is the client, who in Germany - to indicate his predominant role in the construction process - is named by the functional term Bauherr (the one who owns the construction process, so that he can command the process and the other actors). But also - to take another example of the usual way of definition - the construction firm, which is in the principal legal relation to the client, is characterised as Bauunternehmen (construction enterprise). So its role is first defined by its material task, that it has to perform the structural works, whereas the legal aspect, that it has to fulfill a contract, can be again seen as a hidden connotation of the professional or trade term Bauunternehmen. A term equivalent to the English "contractor" does not exist in German. However to indicate the consequences of changes not only in the way of acting, but also in the traditional legal status (which then have an impact of their roles and their internal ways of working) of the construction firm the more functional terms of Generalunternehmer (general contractor) and Nachunternehmer (subcontractor) are used.
So to analyse what can be taken as the "contracting system" in German construction it seems to be more precise to refer at first to the material tasks of the actors, of the roles resulting therefrom, and to consider, how control, turnover and risk are distributed among them. Reference to the legal framework will only be made, where it seems to be helpful for better understanding of the real relations between the actors.
A generic scheme by which roles and functions of actors in the construction process can be identified was first published by Winch and Campagnac (1995 p 7-8) and underwent further development during the research of Le Groupe Bagnolet. This scheme will be used here. In its final shape it discriminates at a first level the three main phases of decision, preparation and construction, and at a second level inside each phase again three functions, which are defining need, find land, and find finance (decision phase), conception, design, and detailing (preparation phase), and production planning, work of the main trades and work of the finishing trades (construction phase). Obviously these main phases are more or less the traditional main activities of client (decision), professionals (preparation) and contractors (construction) and the particular meaning of some recent changes can be seen in the fact, that some actors try to cross the "borders" into one of the other phases. To catch in particular these expansive strategies facility management has been introduced in the scheme as a fourth main phase.