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In classical perspective, projects under a certain size are not feasible for P3. However, there is an emerging trend on using P3 to deliver projects which are frequently at small- to medium- size to meet ever-increasingly complex social needs, including enhancing lifecycle performance of existing facilities, designing and building for resilience and sustainability, ensuring cost effectiveness of public spending and fostering innovation. In contrast with the increasing implementation, small and medium P3s, especially those in the United States, receive little attention in existing studies. This study aims at answering the question: in the context of US, what features of those small- to medium- sized P3s with success records enable the selection of P3 as delivery method.

By critically reviewing the literature, this study synthesizes and discusses the challenges in classical perspective. The authors use a framework drawn from the transaction cost to propose two types of enabling features that could contribute to the success of small and medium P3s. The proposed enabling features are supported by case study of twelve identified small- to medium- sized P3s which have reached financial closure as of 2018 in the United States.

The results show how the identified enabling opportunities have been used in these cases to enhance the viability of the P3 model in the infrastructure market. The two types of features are high tolerance enabler explained by the expectations on indirect and non-monetary compensations, and cost reduction enablers including: (1) being in the sectors with well-established traditions on using private investments; (2) having developers with expertise on infrastructure finance; (3) being in the jurisdictions with favorable legislative environment and (4) having less-uncertain future project revenue.

This study, for the first time, critically examines the enabling features of the P3 model for delivering small and medium infrastructure projects in the United States. This research sheds light on the credibility and viability of small- to medium- sized P3 and increases the confidence in policy makers to promote this model.

The purpose of this paper is to report on a research thesis that investigates the role of procurement practices in effective implementation of infrastructure projects in a developing country, i.e. Pakistan. The research investigated and explored the issues and barriers to effective implementation of different procurement methods, the environment and its suitability for implementing different forms of procurement in context of public sector in Pakistan.

The research was carried out in two stages in the first stage archival analysis was conducted of government documents, reports including reports by international organisations, policy documents and literature. During the second stage case studies were selected based on archival analysis. The unit of analysis is the basis for the case and for this study, it was the procurement of infrastructure projects in public sector in Pakistan and that was the boundary of the research. Eight project case studies were selected from six public sector organizations (organizational case studies). A total of 24 respondents participated from these six organisations.

The research has identified the different procurement choices and reasons for a particular choice, the issues in procurement choice and the issues in procurement implementation in the public sector organisations in Pakistan. It has also described the impact of procurement practice on successful project outcomes. As a result multiple issues have been identified which affects the choice of procurement such as the need for efficiency and finances, client objectives, timely policy decisions, clarity of clients needs, delays in bidding and response, delays in approvals, proposal and bid evaluation procedures, need for relaxation of rules and project characteristics. The major barriers and constraints to implementation of procurement have been reported to be regulatory and legal, risks and contract management, principles of procurement, political, culture, inter and intra organisational issues, conditions of the country, lack of understanding, land acquisition, project revenue and finance issues. Procurement had a direct impact on successful outcomes of the project, the procurement systems in these organisations had a direct relationship and impact on performance and success of the project.

As a result of this analysis a vivid big picture of road map of the ongoing processes and practice of procurement in public sector in Pakistan has been created which vividly portrays the issues and barriers of the procurement practice in Pakistan.

An increase in outsourcing of consultancy services has been observed during procurement and delivery of public-sector infrastructure projects. However, the incidence of project failure has continued unabated despite this shift by public-sector entities. Also, there appears to be limited literature focussed on seeking to provide the rationale governing the decision to outsource or insource consultancy services by public-sector organisations. The purpose of this study was to appraise the performance of public-sector projects in which consultancy services have been outsourced or insourced. These are the gaps which this study was undertaken to fill.

A grounded theory methodology (GTM) research design was adopted based on the nature of evidence sought and gathered from a Provincial Department of Public Works and Infrastructure (PDPWI) in South Africa. Data was obtained from a mixture of semi-structured interviews and project-specific documents spanning a five-year period and was analysed according to the procedures associated with GTM. Accordingly, open coding, axial coding and pattern matching were carried out at several intervals to develop categories and themes.

The findings of the study showed the absence of a structured approach within the PDPWI for facilitating decisions pertaining to outsourcing or insourcing consultancy services within construction projects. Furthermore, the study established that both approaches yielded similar results across all performance facets of cost, time and quality. In addition, a detailed insight into the steps required for the successful application of GTM in built environment research has been provided in the study.

Limited studies have been undertaken to compare the impact of either outsourced or insourced services on the organisational and project performance. This was the gap to which the study reported in this paper was undertaken to contribute.

The complexity of projects has become a serious issue and obstacle in their successful completion. In order to overcome these complexities, it has become imperative to identify the relevant management competencies of project managers. The purpose of this paper is to address the problem of cost, time and scope in engineering infrastructure projects due to their complexities through management competencies.

In the first phase of the study, 32 experts were interviewed through semi-structured pre-tested questionnaire. In this phase, essential elements of complexities were identified initially. This was followed by finding required dimensions of competencies to counter these complexities and to acquire improved performance. In the final stage, required levels of competencies for specific elements of complexity were identified. In the second phase, 85 “project managers” were also approached to get feedback about their recently completed public sector engineering infrastructure projects in Pakistan.

The study identified additional dimensions, i.e. honesty, enthusiasm and dedication, in the case of competencies and adverse law and order situation, political instability, land issues, energy crisis and weak authorization of project managers in the case of complexities. Leadership, management skill, communication skill, effectiveness and result orientation were identified as top quality traits required. The study concluded that there is a significant impact of management competencies and complexities on project performance.

The study contributes to a better understanding of how to improve performance in complex engineering infrastructure projects through adopting management competencies. It also empirically illustrates the relations among project management competencies, complexities and project performance. Although the research is grounded on public sector infrastructure projects, its findings may also be helpful for practices in project management of other sectors.

Public-private partnership (PPP) is mutually beneficial relationships that are formed between the public and private sectors. The private-sector partner typically makes a substantial equity investment, and in return the public sector gains access to new or improved services. When properly vetted and structured, PPP allocate risk to the party best suited to handle it. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between the scale and nature of the PPP's contribution as a driver of the economic growth and gross domestic product (GDP).

Using statistics causality modeling and relevant statistical techniques, the dynamic interactions and interdependencies over PPP and economic growth were addressed and quantified.

Although PPP can free up government resources for other public priorities, three key factors enable PPP to stimulate a country's economic growth: the number of PPP projects under way, the value of PPP projects, and the ideal type of PPP contracts in use.

The number, value, and type of PPP, combined with supportive policies, power economic growth. Governments with well-established and enforced policies against corruption, combined with low business transaction costs, a transparent legislative system, and exchange rate and monetary stability are far more attractive to the private sector.

The amount of expenditure required to scale up smart infrastructure projects is often enormous. Public–private partnership (PPP) is one of the proposed and viable solutions for addressing the financial issues of smart infrastructure projects. However, the most important criterion in choosing PPP over other procurement methods is that the project under the PPP method should deliver the best value for money (VFM) while also including defined economic and social objectives, rather than relying exclusively on efficiency factors. While PPP provides a variety of advantages for developing infrastructure, significant challenges may arise as a result of smart infrastructure initiatives. Diverse PPP approaches have been used to build smart infrastructure around the world, with varying degrees of success. The purpose of this study is to identify the VFM factors that are suitable for smart infrastructure projects and to examine the impact of their interrelationships.

The methodology for this study consisted of three stages: identifying VFM factors in PPP for smart cities based on an extensive literature review, analyzing data from a sample of 90 PPP practitioners using a Likert scale questionnaire and estimating interrelationships among VFM factors using structural equation modeling (SEM).

After performing a SEM analysis on the gathered data, the best fitted measurement model consisted of 11 VFM factors acting as indicators of three latent variables for smart infrastructure projects (clear output specification for measuring performance, efficient dispute resolutions, optimized risk allocation and business models, improved and integrated community services, economic sustainability, appropriate capital structure and collaterals, smart asset management, diffusion of smart technologies, technical innovation, Ince) and three clusters of their interrelations (economic sustainability, integration drive, optimization and smart technology).

This research has resulted in a useful and readily applicable list of factors and clusters of value for money criteria for the implementation of PPP in smart infrastructure projects, assisting public sector management by providing a measure of pre-conditions that can be used as an assessment tool when determining whether a PPP should be used instead of conventional methods.

In addition to the theoretical and methodological contributions, this study produced a usable and readily adaptable list and clusters of value for money factors for the implementation of PPP in smart infrastructure projects.

In the context of public-private partnerships (PPPs), it has been argued that the standard valuation framework produces a paradox whereby government appears to be made better off by taking on more systematic risk. This has led to a range of approaches being applied in practice, none of which are consistent with the standard valuation approach. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate that these approaches are flawed and unnecessary.

The authors step through the proposed alternative valuation approaches and demonstrate their inconsistencies and illogical outcomes, using theory, logic and mathematical proof.

In this paper, the authors demonstrate that the proposed (alternative) approaches suffer from internal inconsistencies and produce illogical outcomes in some cases. The authors also show that there is no problem with the current accepted theory and that the apparent paradox is not the result of a deficiency in the current theory but is rather caused by its misapplication in practice. In particular, the authors show that the systematic risk of cash flows is frequently mis-estimated, and the correction of this error solves the apparent paradox.

Over the past 20 years, PPP activity around the globe amounts to many billions of dollars. Decisions on major infrastructure funding are of enormous social and economic importance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to demonstrate the flaws and internal inconsistencies with proposed valuation framework alternatives for the purposes of evaluating PPPs.

This study aims to proffer a theoretical narrative explaining the poor financial performance of public highway agencies in Nigeria. This study critically spotlights seminal works in the literature offering theoretical narratives on the poor financial performance of public infrastructure projects, to discuss whether they adequately capture the relationship between psychological factors, project governance/leadership issues and knowledge/skill deficiencies related to the cost performance of infrastructure projects in the developing world. The evaluation reveals the predominant contextual exclusivity of these theoretical narratives to the developed world, which tend to under-represent developing countries, such as those on the African continent.

Using a case study research strategy, longitudinal documentary/archival data for 61 highway projects were analyzed. In total, 16 interviews were also conducted with highway officials from the three highway agencies responsible for the execution of the projects. A two-stage deductive-inductive thematic analysis of the collated data was carried out to identify barriers to the financial management of public highway projects, the result of which is cognitively mapped out.

The study showcases empirical insight on cost overruns experienced in Nigerian public projects, because of the trickle-down effect of human and organizational environment, as well as because of workers’ knowledge/skill deficiencies.

The developed theory is contextual to Nigeria, and there is scope for testing its generalisability to other developing nations.

The in-depth trajectory provided uncovers an intricate web of technical and psycho-social, organizational and institutional issues, which have not been identified and explained by previous theoretical narratives.

The National Health Service (NHS) hospitals in Britain are currently in a state of decay following many years of underinvestment in the estate. The NHS urgently requires billions of pounds of investment ranging from total hospital new builds to small refurbishment of existing facilities. The previous Conservative government put forward the Private Finance Initiative (PFI) as the procurement mechanism to address this problem. The new Labour government currently appear to be committing themselves to the same approach. PFI project sponsors have spent upwards of £30m bidding for around 30 major PFI schemes. Despite this, by the time of the UK election in May 1997 not one scheme had reached financial close and many sponsors were expressing their disillusionment with the process. Unlike PFI on other Government infrastructure and service schemes, each PFI hospital is tendered by a separate Trust with their own limited budgets. Many Trusts have demanded schemes without realising that they cannot afford them and whilst these schemes may work out cheaper than publicly financed hospitals over 30 years or more, charges are higher in the early years. This is primarily due to the market for loans, the conditions attached to these loans in terms of repayment periods and cover ratios, and the requirement of the sponsors to generate a reasonable return on their investment. This paper discusses the major issues and analyses some of the technical financial problems surrounding the PFI in the NHS. The authors draw on practical experience of financial structuring and modelling hospital projects to build a generic model to analyse NHS PFI economics.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how construction projects should be conceived and how the productivity of the construction industry impacts upon a nation’s wealth.

The approach has been to marshal the extant literature about the construction industry, construction industry productivity and the economic value of the built environment. Whilst there are many lenses that are used to understand the industry, different ways to measure productivity performance and differing practices between nations, it has been determined that construction industry productivity improvement significantly lags behind other industries.

There is a strong argument that construction productivity improvement correlates to advances in a nation’s economy. Nonetheless, it is the decisions about the nature of infrastructure, the standardisation of infrastructure and the effect upon labour productivity that will have the greatest implications for a nation’s economic future. These economic improvements will be inhibited by legacy infrastructure, particularly in densely populated areas. If substantial innovation occurs, the nations currently holding the highest stock of infrastructure might be economically constrained.

The construction industry is highly fragmented and has the uncertainties of a cyclic industry. It is, therefore, necessary for governments to identify standards and facilitate innovation. The implications for short- and long-term economic performance require that the industry is a fundamental at the highest level of government.

Scholars can use the propositions to further analyse construction productivity improvement and the provision of different types of infrastructure with regard to a nation’s economic performance. Hypotheses are offered to support future research.