Partnership Maturity as a Mediator of Relationship, Process, and Environmental Factors in Design Build Government Building Projects

Partnership development has become increasingly important in Design–Build government building projects due to the need for effective collaboration among project stakeholders. However, limited studies have examined how partnership maturity mediates the relationship between collaborative factors and project performance. This study investigates the effects of relationship factors, process factors, and environmental factors on partnership maturity and project performance in Design–Build government building projects. A mixed-methods approach was employed, combining a questionnaire survey of 214 professionals involved in Design–Build projects with Structural Equation Modelling–Partial Least Squares (SEM-PLS) analysis and expert validation through Focus Group Discussions. The results indicate that relationship factors, process factors, and environmental factors significantly influence partnership maturity, with process factors exerting the strongest effect (β = 0.403). Relationship factors demonstrated the strongest direct influence on project performance (β = 0.376), followed by partnership maturity (β = 0.208), process factors (β = 0.202), and environmental factors (β = 0.167). The model exhibited strong explanatory power, with R2 values of 0.851 for partnership maturity and 0.800 for project performance. The mediation analysis revealed that partnership maturity significantly mediated only the relationship between process factors and project performance. The study contributes to construction management literature by introducing partnership maturity as a selective mediating mechanism in Design–Build projects and provides practical guidance for strengthening collaborative processes to improve project performance in government building projects.