公共项目私人融资新途径——PFI

ＰＦＩ是一种新的公共项目私人融资方式。它鼓励私人部门营建基础设施项目或政府公共项目,并以此为基础提供公共服务的一种区别于传统政府公共项目的出产方式。它能够广泛地适用于许多政府的公共项目领域,在英国该方式已成为政府获得高质量、高效率的政府项目的主要工具。ＰＦＩ的应用有二个基本必须遵循的原则,一是要能够实现安全可靠的经济价值;二是项目的风险能够在政府部门和私人部门之间合理分配。     

Comparative performance of healthcare and transport PFI projects: Empirical study on the influence of key factors

Private Finance Initiative (PFI) has been used on many projects in the UK in the delivery of public services. Cost, time and risk performance in public projects was anticipated to be improved by the superior skills of the private sector. So far, there are limited empirical studies on the life cycle performance of PFI projects, especially performance comparison between different sectors. This study investigated and compared variations in costs, time, and client requirements tracking it through the strategic business case stage to the operational phase in healthcare and transport sectors. It explored the influence of sector-specific factors, project size and maturity of the PFI on these variations. It used documentary analysis of full business cases of five PFI projects and a questionnaire survey of 44 PFI projects in the UK. The findings reveal that there are still considerable cost and time overruns and requirement changes in PFI projects in both sectors over the development of the project and its early use. The health sector was better than the transport sector for time overruns but was worse on costs. Smaller-value projects outperformed larger projects on cost variations but underperformed on time.     

Critical success factors for PPP/PFI projects in the UK construction industry

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) are increasingly used in the United Kingdom's public facilities and services provision through the Private Finance Initiative (PFI). Despite some casualties, PPP/PFI projects have been undertaken successfully, but the reasons for success are not entirely clear. Questionnaire survey research examined the relative importance of 18 potential critical success factors (CSF) for PPP/PFI construction projects in the UK. The results show that the three most important factors are: ‘a strong and good private consortium’, ‘appropriate risk allocation’ and ‘available financial market’. Factor analysis revealed that appropriate factor groupings for the 18 CSFs are: effective procurement, project implementability, government guarantee, favourable economic conditions and available financial market. These findings should influence policy development towards PPPs and the manner in which partners go about the development of PFI projects.     

Critical parameters influencing value for money variations in PFI projects in the healthcare and transport sectors

Achieving good value for money (VFM) is the principal objective of any private finance initiative (PFI) project while sustaining it throughout the contract life is the greatest challenge. Empirical evidence is required to understand uncertainties surrounding VFM of PFI before finding effective ways to improve it. Variations in costs, time and client requirements are explored, between successive review stages of PFI projects from the strategic business case stage through to the operational phase. The magnitudes of these variations are established and critical parameters that influence them are identified. The research methods include a documentary analysis of the full business cases of five PFI projects and a questionnaire survey of 44 PFI projects from the healthcare and transport sectors in the UK. The findings reveal that the current VFM assessment of PFI projects is often carried out under conditions of considerable uncertainty with frequent changes in costs, timescales and client requirements. The list of critical parameters can help practitioners to identify priority areas and achieve a long-lasting VFM. The study broadens the understanding of whole life aspects of VFM of PFI projects and the interactivity of project parameters at different stages.     

Tariff adjustment frameworks for privately financed infrastructure projects

Since privately financed infrastructure (PFI) projects are usually natural monopolies, their tariffs should be regulated to ensure socially desirable outcomes. In reality, the regulation is usually realized through tariff adjustment mechanisms. There are four basic tariff adjustment frameworks for PFI projects - adjustment based on sale price, revenue, operating income and profit after tax. They have different risk exposures and incentives. The adjustment based on the sale price provides the project company with the highest potential to increase profit but exposes it to the highest risk, while the adjustment based on the guaranteed ROR exposes the project company to the lowest risk but provides the least potential for increasing profit. Adjustments based on the revenue or the operating income are somewhere in between. In practice, a hybrid of two or more adjustment frameworks may be adopted to adapt to specific project environments. A well-designed tariff adjustment framework can create a ‘win-win’ solution for both the public and private sectors.     

Achieving best value in private finance initiative project procurement

The wherewithal of achieving best value in private finance initiative (PFI) projects and the associated problems therein are documented. In the UK, PFI has offered a solution to the problem of securing necessary investment at a time of severe public expenditure restraint. In PFI schemes, the public sector clients must secure value for money, while the private sector service providers must genuinely assume responsibility for project risks. A broad‐based investigation into PFI risk management informs the discussion in this paper. It is based on 68 interviews with PFI participants and a case study of eight PFI projects. The research participants comprised of contractors, financial institutions, public sector clients, consultants and facilities management organizations. The qualitative software Atlas.ti was used to analyse the textual data generated. The analysis showed that the achievement of best value requirements through PFI should hinge on: detailed risk analysis and appropriate risk allocation, drive for faster project completion, curtailment in project cost escalation, encouragement of innovation in project development, and maintenance cost being adequately accounted for. Factors that continue to challenge the achievement of best value are: high cost of the PFI procurement process, lengthy and complex negotiations, difficulty in specifying the quality of service, pricing of facility management services, potential conflicts of interests among those involved in the procurement, and the public sector clients' inability to manage consultants.     

Future proofing PPPs: Life-cycle performance measurement and Building Information Modelling

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) are widely used to procure public infrastructure assets and are an effective mechanism for ensuring value for money. However, many PPPs in Australia have been plagued with controversy as they have experienced significant cost and schedule overruns during construction. Critical to the successful delivery of PPP projects is effective performance measurement/evaluation. Yet, conventional ex-post evaluation that solely focuses on meeting budget and a predetermined schedule are invariably applied to measure PPPs in practice. This paper reviews the performance measurement literature used to evaluate PPP projects and proposes that a life-cycle approach to their evaluation is needed to ‘future proof’ their performance and ensure value for money that is delivered to the public sector. As the primary focus of PPPs is to maximise profitability, there is a need to ameliorate the coordination and integration between the Special Purpose Vehicle, end-users and the public sector. This can be enabled through the adoption of Building Information Modelling (BIM) as it not only provides digital representation of the physical and functional characteristics of an asset, but also provides key decision makers with the ability to make informed decisions across a project's life-cycle. When aligned with a series of core indicators that are used for performance measurement, it is suggested that BIM can act as a catalyst for ‘future proofing’ PPPs and enable the successful management of an asset throughout its life-cycle.     

Public sustainable-energy requirements and innovation in UK PFI school projects

In a bid to understand the relationship between public sector clients’ sustainable energy requirements and innovation, this paper describes a study examining the requirement development process in four private finance initiative (PFI) school projects. A case study approach was adopted to enable a greater understanding of the public sector clients’ activities at the front end of the design process, particularly focusing on requirement identification and the effect of the requirement on private sector actors’ pursuit of an innovative sustainable design. The findings have shown that incentive effects of the requirements are often weak in PFI projects, particularly in relation to the requirement’s specificity and achievability, the inability of requirements such as BREEAM to promote energy efficiency and the low weighting of environmental sustainability on PFI bid evaluation criteria. Taken together, these results offer insight into public authorities in relation to the necessary conditions for the use of requirements as an effective contractual mechanism to encourage innovation for sustainable energy.     

三维视角下 PPP 项目关键成功因素研究

政府和社会资本合作（PPP）模式目前在我国已经全面实施,对于提高公共产品服务质量和供给效率具有十分重要的意义。为保证各方参与主体利益,科学合理地确定影响 PPP 项目关键成功因素更有利于项目的成功实施。借助已有文献研究成果和典型案例的启示,对影响 PPP 项目的关键成功因素进行分析。通过建立灰色关联分析模型在所列举的 30 个关键因素清单中分 3 个维度提取并分析了 9 个关键成功因素,即建设运营管理经验与水平、合作体融资方式的创新、采购中透明度和竞争性、公私部门之间权利与义务、风险共享与分担、高效的公共机构、公众支持、合适的法律框架和完善的政策。     

Reinforcing relationships for resilience – by embedding end-user ‘people’ in public–private partnerships

Public–private partnerships (PPPs) target overall benefits from mobilising private resources in delivering public infrastructure. Their longer time spans generate higher risks, hence the greater need for resilience in PPPs, compared to traditional procurement. PPP infrastructure outcomes should include both sustainable and resilient built infrastructure, as well as reliable and resilient service delivery. The public–private cross-sectoral relationships can be significant contributors to resilience. Previous research findings show that public–private relationships are still predominantly formal in PPPs. However, appropriate informal relationships can foster mutual trust and better teamworking that trigger self-adjustment mechanisms to overcome adversities and enhance resilience. Integrating relevant ‘people’ into PPPs to establish a public–private–people partnership (4P) is proposed to reinforce formal–informal relationships, while enhancing relevant ‘social infrastructure’, which could then lead to more resilient and better ‘value for money’ built infrastructure. Findings from another recent study demonstrate the value of 4P in pre-disaster planning. 4P also helps to develop resilient ‘social infrastructure’ for post-disaster reconstruction of sustainable built infrastructure. Conceptual diagrams are developed to summarise how the 4th P could reinforce public–private relationships and inject resilience into a potentially unstable PPP system.     

Water services performance: do operational environment and quality factors count?

Decision makers must keep in mind that water services have an invaluable ‘price’ for the public budget and society’s welfare. However, due to the specific features of the service, water utilities are prone to inefficiency. Thus, performance evaluation becomes indispensable to face this constraint. Besides the application of the traditional technique of Data Envelopment Analysis to evaluate the performance of Portuguese water utilities, this study also implements the robust technique of order-m to assess the influence of operational environment on water utilities’ performance. In spite of several reforms, the Portuguese water sector still reveals significant levels of inefficiency, partially caused by an inappropriate operating scale. Concerning the operational environment, it was possible to observe a positive influence of private sector participation, economies of scope, and groundwater sources on efficiency. The influence of the ‘quality of service provided’ was also studied in this performance analysis.     

私人部门性质对PPP项目产出绩效监管的影响及其优化建议——基于情境模拟实验研究

现阶段PPP项目产出绩效监管尤为重要。针对私人部门为国有企业和私营企业,通过已构建的PPP项目产出绩效监管框架筛选出实验变量,继而对变量进行情境设计,并进行问卷调查对比分析不同性质私人部门的PPP项目产出绩效监管。最后,为政府部门面对不同性质私人部门类PPP项目产出绩效监管提出三条优化建议。     

Alternative approach to credit scoring by DEA: Evaluating borrowers with respect to PFI projects

Private finance initiative (PFI), as a form of public/private partnership (PPP), helps to contract the private sector to governmental projects. In contrast to traditional public financed projects, PFI projects are procured by allowing a private sector entity to take the responsibility to design, build, finance, and operate (DBFO) an asset for a contract period of up to several decades. Moreover, banks are perceived to take the leading role in financing PFI projects. Since project financing involves credit assessment of loan applicants, banks have employed popular credit scoring models to assess their creditworthiness. Although the existing models are useful for credit scoring, new models have to emerge in response to ever-changing business practices. This paper therefore aims at introducing the application of data envelopment analysis (DEA) as an alternative credit-scoring model. Unlike traditional credit-scoring building on a formula where weights to a set of criteria are assigned subjectively, DEA will automatically generate the relative weights for analysis. However, incorporating DEA demands additional considerations, which are discussed in this paper. Finally, examples are demonstrated for illustrating this alterative approach to credit scoring by DEA.     

Delivering energy efficient buildings: a design procedure to demonstrate environmental and economic benefits

One of the most significant environmental impacts of buildings occurs through the consumption of energy during their operational lives. It is a well-known fact that buildings in the UK are only a fraction as efficient as current approaches and available technologies permit. The effective management of the design process is pivotal in the delivery of buildings with improved energy efficiency but, despite this, the monitoring of energy performance is not currently a typical part of the construction design process. This paper describes the development of a design management procedure in which energy performance is monitored from the earliest phases of building inception. The decision support tool gives guidance to design teams at a stage in the design process where there is currently a lack of information on project-specific energy performance issues, and their environmental and economic implications. Life cycle cost performance is captured through elemental life cycle costing, in which the implementation of systems to improve efficiency are considered as a function of additional and avoided life cycle costs. This procedure has been developed through public-sector private finance initiative (PFI) projects, which allow a longer-term view of both capital and operating costs, since the contractors are an integral part of the long-term management consortium. The much greater level of opportunity presented in these contracts and the potential to influence the wider marketplace could offer a breakthrough for the wider acceptance of environmentally sensitive building design.     

试论PPP项目的风险分配原则和框架

PPP项目融资模式在世界范围内已经得到广泛的应用,但在实际的应用中公共部门和私人部门往往就PPP项目中风险的分配难以达成一致,大大延长了双方谈判的时间和增加了交易成本.本文分析了影响PPP项目风险分配的因素,提出了更为合理的风险分配原则,并设计了相应的风险分配框架,对指导公共部门和私人部门谈判PPP项目具有实际指导作用.     

Is construction an industry?

There has been a frequent misconception in analyses of construction sectors of the national economy: the tendency to describe these activities as ‘an industry’ or a small and stable set of ‘industries’. This has led to confusion. Construction was inappropriately assimilated to various forms of manufacturing industry. Characteristics of the construction process were treated as ‘problems’, to whose solution substantial energies were unnecessarily diverted. There has been muddle about the extent to which macro-level planning is appropriate, notably on R&D strategies and innovation for improved industrial efficiency. Construction projects increasingly use unfamiliar technological bases, comparable to ‘technology fusion’ in other sectors. A more fruitful emphasis may be to regard construction as organized as agglomerations of projects - rather than as a discrete industry or a fixed constellation of firms. The idea of the ‘demand chain’ is introduced.

The paper concludes that a ‘technological paradigm’ should replace the ‘industry paradigm’ and that an enduring question remains to explore what is meant by construction ‘capacity’.     

The Private Finance Initiative in English Council Housing Regeneration: A Privatisation too Far?

Despite the enormous body of scholarship that has tracked the transformation of social housing from the ‘public housing model’ of the welfare state era to the ‘social housing model’ of today, large gaps remain in our understanding of this shift. This paper addresses on one such vacuum—the controversial use of the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) as part of the Labour Government's Decent Homes programme in England. Focusing on ‘council housing’ schemes, a critical overview is presented of the housing PFI experience so far. The main purpose is to understand the motives and drivers behind the use of PFI in housing at different scales, assess the progress of the national PFI programme and explore the significant issues, controversies and challenges encountered. The paper concludes that PFI has proved to be more complicated and expensive than its proponents predicted and should be discontinued in the social housing sector.     

Construction and capital formation in less developed economies: unravelling the informal sector in an African city

Sub-Saharan Africa is the poorest and least developed region in the world today. It is also the most rapidly urbanizing, with the greatest need for investment in new infrastructure and buildings. In Kenya, as well as in a number of other countries, the adoption of economic adjustment programmes has led to a sharp decline in publicly funded construction projects. What activity there is takes place in the private sector. The shift from public to private investment has been accompanied by a noticeable fall in the volume of work passing through the more formally organized construction system and an increase in activity in the ‘informal’ system. The informal construction system is characterized by a much closer relationship between building owners and building labour, with owners purchasing materials as and when they have the funds and engaging directly the services of small enterprises and self-employed workers. In Nairobi (Kenya) substantial multi-storey projects are now being implemented in this way by a myriad of small firms. This paper examines these devel8 opments and assesses their implications for our understanding of ‘the construction industry’ and the process of capital formation.     

Sustainable construction: the development and evaluation of an environmental profiling system for construction products

There has been a rapid increase in the number of low environmental impact or ‘green’ buildings constructed in recent years, due to factors such as the UK government's Sustainable Development Strategy, new environmental legislation and perceived operational and business advantages. Consequently, the demand for up‐to‐date information, guidance and design ‘tools’ to help property professionals procure greener buildings also continues to grow. The development of a new edition of one such tool: The Green Guide to Specification, was based on research designed to evaluate user needs and current design and specification practices and expectations. Many property professionals do not use environmental tools on all projects because of time considerations and the disruption caused by having to take an ‘extra step’ in the design and specification process. Specifiers would only use such tools either when instructed to do so by clients or because of the specifier's own organisational green agenda. For environmental tools to be more widely used, information should also be embedded within commonly used specification programmes such as the National Building Specification (NBS) as well as in stand‐alone versions.