Lack of trust has been identified as one of the issues that hinder collaboration among business partners. Hence, there is a need to conduct a study in ensuring the entire supply chain components collaborates in a socially trustful environment. Thus, this paper reports on the findings of the study that has been conducted which investigates the trust values perceived by the business community. As a contribution, a trust-based model for trusted partners' identification is proposed which will be later transformed into an IT implementable expert system. For the purpose of constructing and validating the method, the Malaysian construction industry is chosen as the case study due to its size and importance to the economy. Thus, this paper puts forward the background of the research, some relevant literatures which lead to trust values elements formulation, data collection and a glimpse of the proposed method for trusted partner selection. © 2013 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.