This issue starts with two contrasting articles from Australia. In the first, at page 4, Mr Roger Quick of Gadens, Brisbane, describes the process by which the Queensland Department of Main Roads examined and developed a model form of procurement used in the United Kingdom and known as Early Contractor Involvement (ECI). The background was a boom in the construction market but coupled with a forecast of a downturn. It was necessary to devise a flexible procurement model which was sensitive to market conditions but at the same time, as Mr Quick says, “solving what may be called the value for money puzzle”. Thus the article covers a wide field. Entitled “Queensland’s ECI Contract”, it describes ECI fully, it looks at risk and legal factors such as relational contracting, it considers the local factors that might affect its use in Australia and, most interestingly, it compares ECI with project alliancing and then explains what happened in Queensland. Mr Quick concludes that the result gives value for money to a government principal; the contract incorporates both relationship management and partnering techniques that have been established in project alliancing; and that it does so by extending the UK model which was drawn up for use in civil engineering so that it is usable for building projects. As the conditions in Queensland are comparable to those found in many other countries we believe that Mr Quick’s thorough and detailed article will be of considerable value elsewhere.