Licensee’s relationship with the suppliers: Simple rules, lessons learned

Licensee’s relationships with the suppliers as well as its means to control suppliers and sub-suppliers have become a relevant issue in the high-risk industry. The longer the chain the more difficult it is to govern. A wealth of research and analysis on project governance has been conducted, but relatively few of them have focused on safety. The objective of this explorative study is to look at the ways the licensee’s relationship with the suppliers has been organized based on lessons learned from earlier either successful or failed projects. In addition, the study identifies situations where intervention strategies would be needed on the part of the licensee, as well as follow-up principles and their requirements for the licensee. The data consist of interviews with the project managers and experts involved in complex projects in the petroleum industry in Norway and nuclear industry in Finland. The method of analysis is content analysis. The analytical framework consists of project management and safety culture literature and theories on learning.