Despite the Syrian government’s commitment to provide adequate and affordable housing, through housing programs implemented over successive five-year development plans, there is still a shortage of affordable homes for low-income people. This shortfall can be attributed to constraints at two basic levels: housing system design (strategic level) and housing system implementation (operational level). Housing policies and construction practices systematically lack the proper strategies and sophisticated approaches for change. In contrast, the UK government has adopted strategic and operational mechanisms for enforcing change in publicly-funded projects through a reform agenda (policy package) aimed at creating innovative collaborative relationships between client organizations, and private sector consortia. In this, the procurement processes were seen as a key driver to stimulate change for effective provision of affordable housing. This study aimed to investigate possible efficiency improvements in the affordable housing supply process in Syria, focusing on the role of more sophisticated approaches to project delivery, i.e. the procurement process. Data collected through a literature review and interviews with key informants from both the UK and Syria, forms the basis for a comparative assessment on how lessons learned from the UK experience can be applied in the Syrian context.