The Procurement and Testing of Process Plant for the Water Industry

The paper describes contractual procedures necessary when performance guarantees are required for process plant. It shows how the Institution of Chemical Engineers Model Form of Conditions of Contract for Process Plants (Red Book) can be suitably modified to meet the needs of the water industry.
Particular attention is given to devising suitable testing regimes to meet the contract stages – construction, completion, take-over, and performance tests. The principles underlying the proposed testing procedures are stated.     

Minimum revenue guarantees valuation in PPP projects under a mean reverting process

Minimum revenue guarantees, where the government assumes a portion of the traffic risk to guarantee a minimum level of revenue and profitability to the investors, is a standard risk mitigation mechanism for Public-Private Partnership contracts. Typically, valuation models for these guarantees assume that traffic volume follows a geometric Brownian motion under the Real Options Approach. However, this is often done without testing whether this assumption is reasonable or not. In this article, statistical tests are applied to check the validity of this assumption and show how toll road traffic can be modelled under alternate models, such as Mean Reverting processes, if the geometric Brownian motion assumption is rejected. In that sense, this approach is applied to the case of a toll road concession in Colombia where a Mean Reverting process is used to model the traffic. Finally, it is showed that this model is a valid tool for defining the fair value of the minimum amount of revenue secured by the government.     

Contractual Issues of Process-Plant Projects

The paper describes the structure of a process-plant contract and distinguishes it from other forms of design-and-construct contracts. The various tests used in process-plant contracts are highlighted, including performance tests relating to process guarantees and the remedies for failure to achieve such guarantees, with particular reference to the water industry. The differences between price-based and cost-based contracts are reviewed, together with three significant areas of contractor's liabilities for design, defects, and overall contract liability. The paper also briefly introduces the development of operation and maintenance contracts and design-build-finance-operate contracts.     

Optimized real options-based approach for government guarantees in PPP toll road projects

The uncertainty associated with future traffic levels in Build–Operate–Transfer toll road projects lead to difficulties in obtaining finance and thus to unsuccessful bids. In order to increase the attractiveness of projects for investors, governments usually provide several types of guarantees such as Minimum Revenue Guarantees (MRGs). In many cases, challenges associated with the valuation of this uncertainty force governments to provide excessive guarantees, placing an increased burden on the public budget. Based on this problem, a real-option-based model is presented for the identification of optimum upper and lower boundaries of compound MRG and Maximum Revenue Cap (MRC) options which establish a fair risk allocation structure. The proposed model uses an optimization approach in which high levels of guarantees in initial years are compensated by the transfer of excess revenues obtained by the private investor in late years. The optimum upper and lower boundaries of compound MRG and MRC options are identified using the proposed model. Results reveal that the emerging net guarantee amount generated by using any pair values of the MRG and MRC that remain in the identified interval not only maintains the attractiveness of project for private investors but also restrains government contingent liabilities. Thus, the identified interval of MRG and MRC enables the structuring of a flexible bargaining environment for both parties.     

The option value of government guarantees in infrastructure projects

The participation of private capital in public infrastructure investment projects has been sought by many governments who perceive this as a way to overcome budgetary constraints and foster economic growth. For some types of projects, this investment may require government participation in the form of project guarantees in order to reduce the risk to the private investor, and as a consequence, the government assumes a contingent liability which may have significant future budgetary impacts. We present a minimum traffic guarantee (MTG) real options model that differs from most of the literature in the field by using market data to determine stochastic project parameters. This model can be used to assess the value of these guarantees, allows the government to analyse the cost–benefit of each level of support, and proposes an alternative to limit the exposure of the government while still maintaining the benefits to the private investor. We apply this model to the projected 1000 mile long BR‐163 toll road that will link the Brazilian Midwest to the Amazon River. We conclude that the use of public–private partnerships (PPP) with guarantees and caps on total government outlays can be modelled effectively using option pricing methods and can be a solution to attract private investment to high risk public infrastructure projects.     

新疆EPC总承包模式在项目中的运用及效果

介绍了EPC总承包模式及该模式的优势,通过EPC总承包的工程实例探讨了EPC总承包形式在新疆地区项目施工中的运用效果,说明了该EPC总承包模式能实现整合资源、缩短工期、降低投资、保证质量的目的。     

市政基础设施BT项目的回购期及回购担保

结合《中国人民银行贷款通则》以及其他商业银行的贷款规定,对BT项目回购期提出建议,即回购期一般不应短于项目的缺陷责任期,且回购期与建设期合计不应超过10年。就回购期及支付方式对回购款的影响进行比较;并就回购担保重点阐述现行BT项目回购担保的类型以及选择原则。     

Mitigating expropriation risk through vertical separation of public utilities: The case of Argentina

In 2002, Argentina devalued its currency and froze public utility rates thus breaching the guarantees granted to investors the decade before. Those guarantees had lowered investors' cost of capital by substantially reducing expropriation risk. This paper looks into the governance structure chosen by Argentina for the privatization process and potential alternatives after a decade of contract breaches. Future governance should be market-oriented, involving vertically separated companies with former public utilities voluntarily acting as operating companies or OpCos, and NetCos in charge of all network expansions under the structure of PPPs created for such purposes.     

浅析DAB争议解决方式的法律效力

详细介绍并分析了目前在国际工程纠纷争议中得到广泛应用的DAB争议解决方式具有的独特的DAB协议的法律效力;DAB程序的法律效力;DAB决定的法律效力和DAB决定的执行效力.     

聚羧酸系高性能减水剂在预拌混凝土中的应用

聚羧酸系高性能减水剂已在上海市预拌混凝土中开始大量应用,但在应用时还存在一些问题,本文介绍了在实际施工中解决混凝土保坍性的方法,在中、低标号混凝土中大量使用的方式,表明聚羧酸系高性能减水剂可在预拌混凝土中普遍使用,具有非常广阔的应用前景。