INTRODUCTION

The aim of this paper is to provide overview of and insight into a major construc-tion project of our time, the fixed link across Storebælt in Denmark. Five rese-arch themes central to the characterisation of such large international projects will be addressed in accordance with the methodology articulated by the Groupe Bagnolet. The overall objective of combining these perspectives is to identify essential points of friction around which the main actors of construction mediate their co-operation and develop their competencies. As the single elements of this conceptual framework have been further elabora-ted in a series of theme papers, it has not been within the scope of this paper to evaluate its relevance as a global structuring tool for understanding large international construction projects. This methodological perspective is of course also central to future efforts in the Groupe Bagnolet. In this connection, howe-ver, the thematic structure serves the purpose of bringing order to a first genera-tion analysis of large amounts of empirical data. At the time of completion of this paper, the road part of the Storebælt link was just being completed and put into operation. This means that only limited parts of the project could be analysed retrospectively as closed events. On the other hand the possibility of being able to monitor real time sequences and their impacts in organisations often reveal more accurately the successively developing interdependent relations between actors and struc-tures in such organisations. It should, however, be stated that these conditions together with other practical circumstances had an influence on the access to information, leading to a quite heterogeneous and non-systematic pile of empirical data of restricted analytical validity. Consequently this study is rather narrative in its substance. The main sources of information referred to are firstly a number of interviews with client and consortia representatives, executed during two periods in the summer of 1994 and in the early 1996. Secondly the client organisation published a fairly comprehensive flow of PR material throughout the entire project period. And thirdly more research oriented studies, although few in number, have been drawn upon whenever possible. It is hoped that this paper despite, or perhaps because of, its methodological broadness and sporadically composed empirical basis, will advance the under-standing of the multiplicity of driving forces within the entirety of large construc-tion projects and thus inspire further research into the nature and intervening mechanisms of these forces.