Organizing the Argumentation for Changing the Delivery System Using Choosing by Advantages (CBA)

Megaprojects contain strategic decisions that must be approved outside of the project. A clear and understandable argumentation is required to communicate and push through such decisions. As shown in the literature, Choosing by Advantages (CBA) helps teams create a shared understanding regarding a decision resulting in a strong argumentation of the decision outcome. Therefore, this research aims to better understand how CBA helps to make a strategic decision that impacts all project levels and creates the argumentation to get the approval of the management board of the company. This paper describes why and how the Deutsche Bahn team of the project Munich main station proceeded with the decision to change the project delivery system from design–bid–build (DBB) to integrated project delivery (IPD) while the project was already in different design stages using the CBA tabular method. As all authors (consultant and client) were involved in the research, participatory action research was used as the research approach. The paper demonstrates how CBA (1) helped to create a shared understanding of IPD, (2) helped to understand the scope of the multiparty agreement, (3) helped to organize the argumentation, and (4) helped to create trust regarding the argumentation.