Abstract: The majority of Chinese international Engineering-Procurement-Construction (EPC) contractors are construction companies. Because their strengths lie in construction, there is a clear need for these contractors to choose suitable designers as their cooperative alliance to improve the design ability of international EPC project. Based on literature review, we construct a conceptual model of alliance between contractors and designers in international EPC projects. Path analysis is adopted to analyze the data collected through questionnaires, interviews, and case studies to test the above conceptual model, and two significant paths from contractor-designer alliance to final design ability are revealed: alliance → preliminary design ability → final design ability; alliance → final design ability. The results demonstrate that preliminary design ability is the basis of final design ability and can critically affect the latter. The contractor-designer alliance can not only improve its final design ability by enhancing its preliminary design ability, but also directly promote its final design ability.

Key words: international project, engineering procurement construction (EPC), alliance, preliminary design ability, final design ability