Including prospective tenants and homeowners in the urban development process in Finland

The twofold purpose of this paper is to establish the prospective inhabitants as a part of the development process, and to provide an overview of participatory planning in the context of Finnish urban residential public?Cprivate partnerships (PPPs). This overview examines how the future inhabitants of new residential developments can contribute to informed decision-making within a PPP framework. Communicative planning theory serves as a framework to compare the urban development process from the point of view of future inhabitants. Finnish case studies are used to compare the traditional public-led processes with processes based on PPPs. This comparison is discussed within the context of PPPs and how they may evolve further and develop into a public?Cprivate-people partnership (4P) model. The examination of the case studies suggests that involving future inhabitants as stakeholders in the urban planning development process would lead to and require new methods of participation. These methods potentially impact the PPP process as a whole and on several levels. In the Finnish examples discussed here, these range from elements of general planning to individual house design. The research, whilst drawing on the broad field of PPP research, is based on Finnish case studies only. However, this research suggests that the 4P approach is a practical model which may fill the gap between international PPP theory and local, practical solutions for the planning of urban development, both in Finland and elsewhere. Future research can look at this model in other PPP jurisdictions and contexts. The 4P model can be used to establish new methods to plan and develop local infrastructure which meets the needs of future inhabitants. The findings of this paper emphasise the crucial role of future inhabitants in the PPP process. The conclusions points out the possibilities for broad and open participation in urban planning and development processes. The 4P model is found to be a potentially valuable theoretical and practical concept for use in PPP urban developments.     

Review of studies on the public–private partnerships (PPP) for infrastructure projects

Public–private partnership (PPP) is an approach adopted to enhance the economic value of infrastructure outputs, and it encompasses a broad spectrum of public sector infrastructure. Many researchers have explored the application of PPP to improve the efficiency of infrastructure delivery. This study aims to review the existing PPP research to explore the status quo, trends, and gaps in research for PPP infrastructure projects. A systematic process involving a three-phase word frequency analysis, cluster analysis, and a search on potential research topics helps to provide enough potential articles related to PPP research and reduce arbitrariness and subjectivity involved in the research topic analysis. As a result, six main research topics aligned with the infrastructure PPP projects were derived. The research gaps and research directions can serve as a motivation for researchers and practitioners to work on the next generation of PPP studies to support the development of infrastructure.     

Turkish experience with public private partnerships in infrastructure: Opportunities and challenges

Turkey has been the most active user of PPP contracts for the delivery of infrastructure services in Eurasia in recent years. Also, it has an ambitious PPP portfolio which would be realized in coming years. This study attempts to explore whether PPPs would genuinely bring efficiency gains in the delivery of public services or pose new challenges for the performance of public administration from a broader economic perspective. The government has considered them as a panacea to deliver much needed infrastructure services, due to the large fiscal deficits and high public debt. This study argues that although PPPs can play a role in facilitating infrastructure investments, they can still impose unduly costs on the society, if enabling institutions, rules and procedures surrounding PPPs remain immature.     

High Potential

This paper discusses the need for a skills development infrastructure that allows workers to overcome the many challenges that arise when organizations implement lean techniques. This infrastructure needs to focus on helping the workers meet their personal and team objectives and not be limited to standardized training approaches. To avoid wasting valuable capability building effort, attention must be given to ensure that all training and development activities match the real demands of the organization. This may require staff to be reallocated to roles that more closely fit their skill profiles. To develop new capabilities in existing staff, however, the creation of "pull" demand is a pre-requisite. This paper describes six techniques to create pull for new skills within an organization. By putting the right structures and mechanisms in place to recognize the required capabilities, identify gaps in the workforce capabilities, and create demand for the closing of those gaps, lean organizations can build an infrastructure that can fulfil that demand in a sustainable way across the organization     

An integrated ecosystem model for understanding infrastructure PPPs

To overcome the seemingly chronic funding gap for public infrastructure investments, well over thousand Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) have been carried out around the world with varying success in terms of investor returns and socio-economic sustainability. This paper proposes an integrated model that assesses PPP projects at three levels of observation: i) the market; ii) the cash-flow of a project; and iii) the ecosystem around PPPs. The aim is to build a more holistic yet comprehensible framework that links these three levels to better understand PPPs especially in the context of infrastructure projects. It can also be modified to fit multiple contexts and used as a tool for analysing PPPs in their early stages.     

Strategic policy analysis for infrastructure rehabilitation using system dynamics

Recent requirements for sustainable development and increasing trend for public–private partnerships (PPPs) have added additional complexities to the policy-making process in the infrastructure management domain. To support policy analysis, this paper presents a system dynamics (SD) model to analyse the impact of different strategic policies (e.g. budgeting, PPP involvement) on infrastructure serviceability, backlog accumulation and sustainability. The proposed model has been implemented on a network of school buildings from the Toronto District School Board asset inventory. Four sets of experiments with different policy scenarios over a 50-year strategic planning horizon have been conducted to investigate policies related to rehabilitation, budget distribution, government investment and PPP involvement. The proposed model was implemented on a commercial SD software incorporating all the dynamic interactions among the strategic parameters. The experiment results show that the model works as a practical decision support tool that enables asset managers to test the effectiveness of various strategic policy scenarios on long-term infrastructure performance.     

基础设施PPP项目残值风险的界定研究

从PPP模式在我国的应用现状出发,阐述残值风险研究的重要意义;通过文献研究,确定残值风险的定义与内涵;最后通过分析国内外现有PPP模式的标准合同范本,研究基础设施PPP项目残值风险的处理现状,并提出一定的建议。     

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.     

Value for Money and Risk in Public–Private Partnerships

Problem, research strategy, and findings: Delivering improved public services at lower cost, also known formally as value for money (VfM), is often the main rationale for procuring large infrastructure projects through public–private partnerships (PPPs). However, it is unclear whether the ex ante assessments of PPPs account for key planning concerns, including limitations on community consultation, contractual lock-ins that curtail public flexibility to make future plans, and a political preference for PPPs that may influence the way that projects are structured and evaluated. This set of questions is examined for 28 infrastructure PPPs delivered in Ontario, Canada, and interviews with18 senior political, government, and private-sector participants in the province's PPP industry. We find that transferring of construction risks from government to the private-sector partners drives VfM results, and may overvalue the extent to which planning related risks can be transferred.

Takeaway for practice: PPP contract structures should permit more transparency during the project planning process and preserve the flexibility of governments to control key planning tasks such as user fees, service coordination and facility expansion. Strategies might include: the unbundling of construction and operation phases of the PPP in all but the most unique situations, the use of competitive dialogue tendering to deepen public–private collaboration earlier in the planning process, and the inclusion of contract rebalancing terms to better share rather than transfer project risks.

Research support: This research was funded through a Standard Research Grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (Application Number: 110998).     

Large-scale public venue development and the application of Public–Private Partnerships (PPPs)

Large-scale venues for exhibitions and events are important public infrastructure. Developing venues have captured much of governments' attention due to the potential benefits the industry would bring to the community. However, venue development requires considerable capital and operating costs, unique standards of design and complicated operational issues. Public–Private Partnerships were introduced by governments as innovative delivery models to bring forward venue projects. This paper presents comparative case studies of two PPP venue projects in Hong Kong Special Administrative Region and New Zealand aiming to investigate key challenges for using PPPs in venue development and propose strategies to address the problems and assist future planning and organization for venue PPPs. The research shows that for a successful venue PPP, the following are critical features: (1) sound business case development; (2) streamlined financial arrangements; (3) robust tendering; (4) effective governance structure and partnership-based consortium; and (5) realistic risk allocation.     

Power relations in the finance of infrastructure public-private partnership projects

This research investigates the impact of project finance on the ability of Special Purpose Vehicles (SPVs) to deliver infrastructure Public Private Partnership (PPP) projects. The research reports on data that was collected through 46 in-depth interviews with senior executive practitioners involved in PPPs in Australia. Analysis of this data confirms that while SPVs are integral vehicles for PPP integration, organizational power dynamics can generate tensions that restrict SPVs’ ability to manage PPP delivery effectively. Control of the key resource of capital, by debt and equity investors, is central in SPV power plays. Improved understanding of power dynamics will help PPPs better achieve benefits through reforms that enhance managerial agency and develop stronger social and system integration, enabling better alignment of the interests of key stakeholders.     

Public-private partnerships in the water sector: A review

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) offer possible solutions for governments seeking to achieve better value for money and fund the investments needed to provide infrastructure and manage public services. Water-sector projects demand extensive, up-front and sunk investments, and inefficiency levels are often significant. This study conducted a systematic review of previous research on water sector PPP projects. The research design is innovative in that it relied on a hybrid methodology combining systematic quantitative, semantic network and narrative analyses. The literature review protocol applied found 122 relevant studies published in top journals. Five key topics within water-related PPP studies were identified: risk management, PPP contractual arrangements, financing and tariffs, infrastructure, and governance. The most important topic is risk management, within which individual scholars’ contributions were tracked. However, a consensus has not been reached about the best risk matrix for improving PPP contracts in the water sector.     

Stakeholder dynamics and responsibilities in Public–Private Partnerships: A mixed experience

Although stakeholder management is seen as one of the main success factors of Public–Private Partnerships (PPPs), to date, limited research has investigated actual stakeholder management in PPPs. After positioning PPP in the current stakeholder management theory, a comparative case study analysis of four PPP infrastructure projects demonstrates the relevance and importance of stakeholder inclusion in PPPs. The case study findings indicate that a PPP makes the stakeholder environment more complex to manage, due to the increasing importance of the stakeholder context and dynamics. Hence, allocating stakeholder responsibilities between the public initiator and private consortium becomes problematic as it goes hand in hand with balancing between reactive and proactive responses to stakeholder claims. In order to cope with the PPP specific stakeholder characteristics, the use of a dynamic dual stakeholder management tool is recommended as well as the identification of governance structures that allow the sharing and division of responsibilities between stakeholders.     

Root causes of conflict and conflict resolution mechanisms in public-private partnerships: Comparative study between Ghana and China

Conflict is inevitable in public-private partnership (PPP) due to the long-term agreement and multiplicity of stakeholders with varying beliefs and interests. However, a thorough understanding of the root causes of conflict beforehand helps to minimize conflict occurrence, thereby ensuring a smooth PPP process. This paper aims to explore and evaluate the root causes of conflicts in PPPs through a comparative study between Ghana and China. Further, the most suitable conflict resolution mechanisms are explored from the Ghanaian and Chinese perspectives. Results show that causes of conflict ranked higher in Ghana directly relate to poor governance and contract arrangement, whereas causes related to poor risk management and communication are ranked higher in China. Further, arbitration and negotiation are the most suitable conflict resolution mechanisms for PPPs in Ghana and China respectively. The outputs of this study inform international private investors interested in PPPs in Africa and China of the possible sources of disputes and resolution mechanisms in PPPs. This will enable international investors to develop strategic measures before entering into the PPP markets of both regions.     

Institutional entrepreneurship and infrastructure public-private partnership (PPP): Unpacking the role of social actors in implementing PPP projects

The current infrastructure public-private partnership (PPP) literature overstates the mechanistic requirements of PPPs, but overlooks the social dynamics underlying their implementation. The current study addresses this gap by exploring the activities and strategies several social actors deployed to initiate and implement an airport PPP project in Saudi Arabia. By connecting insights from the PPP and institutional entrepreneurship literatures, two main contributions are made. First, it is demonstrated that the process of institutional entrepreneurship goes well beyond the agentic powers of a few institutional entrepreneurs, and entails the collaborative actions of several actors working across multiple institutional fields. Second, the study emphasizes the importance of theorizing the implementation of PPP projects as a cognitive and a social undertaking in which social actors actively address the institutional and technical constraints that obstruct PPP projects.     

PPP模式立法规制及其在我国的应用研究

作为基础设施建设与运营的新型模式,PPP模式在中国的应用得到了普遍的关注,其立法问题是PPP模式真正得以推广的关键所在。本文从研究各国的相关立法规制、立法体系和法律文本等入手,对照我国实际应用PPP模式的状况,分析我国立法中存在的问题,并对相关立法模式和授权方法提出建议,以期对我国应用PPP模式提供合理的建议。     

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.     

Identifying design development factors in Australian PPP projects using an AHP framework

In Australia consortiums will come together and create an initial design concept or sketch design at the public–private partnership (PPP) bid stage. If the bid is successful this initial design is then developed further. However, a winning bid may have been evaluated on financial criteria alone and the consortium’s capability to develop the design through to project delivery may not have been thoroughly evaluated. In theory, design is a key process in PPP projects and the aim of the research was to understand what capabilities are important in the development of a design through this process. To clarify these issues, a range of activities and organizational factors linked to design development are proposed using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method. This method was chosen in order to see which design development factors were ranked more highly by experts. In this research the hierarchy was designed employing the categories of exploratory and exploitative design development. Below each of these overarching categories, there were four design development functional distinctions: the two exploratory distinctions were Design (D) and Design Management (DM). The two exploitative distinctions were Design Support (DS) and Design Infrastructure (DI). A further list of 36 design development sub-criteria was developed under the above categories. These sub-criteria formed the basis of a survey of respondents drawn from a database of industry sources in the public domain as well as a list gathered from a large developer involved in PPP projects. It included relatively senior managers, PPP project managers and architects. Survey respondents identified a recent PPP project that they had worked on. From the 36 responses it can be seen that the exploratory Design (D) and Design Management (DM) activities were ranked more highly than the exploitative activities of Design Support (DS) and Design Infrastructure (DI) associated with a PPP project organization. This suggests that PPP frameworks should account for these exploratory factors as well as the exploitative factors associated with compliance, quality systems and project team infrastructure. This indicates that in PPP projects design development through the effective management of an initial design is a critical factor.     

Public-private partnerships in Spanish Ports: Current status and future prospects

Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) have proved to be more than adequate as a means to develop transport infrastructure, especially in the case of large-scale infrastructure such as ports. However, under certain specific circumstances they can lead to certain failures, and so huge public losses. Both the country's hard-hit economy and its vast experience in PPP investments make Spain an ideal case to analyse the successes and failures of these types of contracts, at a time of severe public investment constraints and need for real efficient execution of projects. This paper aims to provide an up-to-date review of PPP experiences in Spanish ports under a legislative framework which fosters public-private cooperation. More explicit and exhaustive contract terms, proper risk assignment, a higher control over demand forecast in port projects, and certain competition concerns are identified as the main requirements for future policy actions.     

项目融资BOT与PFI模式的比较

BOT和PFI都是项目融资中的典型模式,都属于PPP模式的范畴.在我国,BOT模式首先被引入,对我国城市基础设施建设和国民经济发展起到了重要的作用.近些年PFI模式以及PPP模式也逐渐被引入.本文将从产生背景、概念界定、应用领域、运作程序上对BOT和PFI两种模式进行分析比较,以期更好地认识和应用这两种融资模式,为我国的基础设施建设做出更大贡献.