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Competitive tendering in South Africa is often associated with procurement based on the lowest fee tendered. Previous research on this topic did not provide in-depth examinations of how pricing within consulting engineering companies was affected by competitive tendering nor did it illuminate the extent to which professional services were impacted by competitive tendering. This paper aims to examine the implications of competitive tendering on pricing and delivery of consulting engineering services in South Africa.

A survey research strategy with a questionnaire as the research instrument elicited qualitative data from 28 experienced consulting engineers in South Africa. Thematic analysis was used to analyse qualitative data from the questionnaires.

Three key themes were identified, namely: considerations when determining consulting engineering fees on competitively tendered projects; the impact of reduced fees due to competitive tendering on the delivery of consulting engineering services; and interventions to prevent unsustainably “low” professional fees. Many consulting engineers in South Africa still determine fees using fee scales, while other considerations include resources, project complexity, risk, etc. Most participants asserted that design optimisation/value engineering, training, meetings and construction monitoring were adversely impacted by “low” fees.

This paper provides in-depth qualitative feedback from experienced consulting engineers (most having more than 20 years’ experience) on a topical issue in the South African construction industry. Thematic analysis was a novel method of analysis that was not used previously in this area of study.

Targets set out by state institutions, with respect to supplying water to deprived communities, seem to be idealistic and not realistic. Study envisioned to assess challenges of financing water infrastructure projects, and determines the role of the state towards infrastructure development by holistically planning and engaging with the private sector.

The study adopted a quantitative approach, whereby a questionnaire survey was conducted among different stakeholders involved in water infrastructure projects in South Africa. Data gathered were analysed using percentages, mean item score and standard deviation.

The study revealed that most challenges affecting the success of the financing of water infrastructure projects in South Africa are corruption, hostility towards private participation, cost recovery constraints, high fiscal deficits by state government, unreliable planning and procurement processes, and a rapid increasing number of municipalities that lack technical and administrative capacity to plan implement, operate and maintain water assets.

This research paper investigates projects’ financing challenges with a broad inspection on the role of the public sector. The apparent role of the international structures such as OECD, IMF and World Bank had no influence in the study. From the findings, it is clear that the central government and state institutions lack the necessary resources to accelerate infrastructure development, water infrastructure in particular. The study, thus, recommends a complete expansion and development of state capacity as well as improved collaborations with the private sector to drive the success delivery of services to the public.

Improved and flexible regulations and legislative guidelines are required to ensure that both sectors fulfil their side of the bargain, with an ultimate goal of meeting the predetermined targets of supplying adequate water to the deprived communities.

This study adopts an institutional entrepreneurship perspective in the context of public–private partnerships (P3s) to highlight the role of social actors in enacting institutional change in a complex organizational setting. By studying the actions of two prominent social actors, the authors argue that successful institutional change is the result of dynamic managerial activity supported by political clout, organizational authority and the social positioning of actors.

The authors conducted a field-based case study in a complex institutional and organizational setting in Alberta, Canada. The authors employed an institutional entrepreneurship perspective to identify and analyze the activities of two allied actors motivated to transform the institutional environment for public infrastructure delivery.

The empirical study suggests that the implementation of institutional change is both individualistic and collaborative. Moreover, it is grounded in everyday organizational practices and activities and involves a coalition of allies invested in enacting lasting change in organizational practice(s), even when maintaining the status quo seems advantageous.

The authors critique the structural explanations that dominate the literature on public–private partnership implementation, which downplays the role of agency and minimizes its interplay with institutional logics in effecting institutional change. Rather, the authors demonstrate that, given the observed impact of social actors, public–private partnership adoption and implementation can be theorized as a social phenomenon.

In this study, the authors revisit Alberta's public-private partnership (P3) program after 20 years of field level experience by retracing its historical emergence and institutional evolution given its political context. Specifically, the authors adopt a path dependence perspective to reconstruct and reexamine Alberta's P3 program emergence, reflect on the successes achieved, and articulate challenges that must be overcome to institutionalize P3s as part of Alberta's infrastructure delivery environment in the future.

Adopting a constructivist approach and a case-based methodology, the authors (re)analyze the activities of governmental agents, private industry, and other actors as part of a new infrastructure policy introduced in 2002 to transform the provincial institutional landscape to accommodate P3.

The authors find Alberta's P3 emergence was driven by the necessity of its infrastructure deficits, political expediency, and resource scarcity. Furthermore, with well-entrenched conservative political actors as gatekeepers, Alberta's P3 implementation demonstrated stability and incremental change simultaneously, consistent with core elements of path dependency. Following the introduction of P3 in Alberta, the province lacked formal institutional structures that would transition its P3 program from good to great and enable it to become firmly embedded in the public infrastructure delivery landscape. With the subsequent absence of P3-convinced (political) leadership and uncertainty about its P3 policy direction, Alberta was unable or unwilling to consolidate the progress made at the start of the program.

Most recently, the emergence of new political leadership in Alberta has (re)catalyzed policy progress, pointing toward a more methodical program approach, and suggesting a rediscovered confidence in P3s in the province with the establishment of a P3 Office (P3O), including nascent formal rules for unsolicited bids. These recent changes in our view make for a much more anchored policy and could lead to program sustainability and eventual institutionalization. Given the unpredictability of the recent political change, a more robust analysis of the relationship between political party control, leadership, and P3 stability is required to anticipate future policy and organizational obstacles.

The unprecedented SARS-CoV-2 (COVID-19) pandemic has further constrained the budgets of governments worldwide for delivering their much-needed infrastructure. Consequently, public-private partnerships (PPPs), with the private sector's investment and ingenuity, would appear to be an increasingly popular alternative. Value for money (VfM) has become the major criterion for evaluating PPPs against the traditional public sector procurement and, however, is plagued with controversy. Hence, it is important that governments compare and contrast their practice with similar and disparate bodies to engender best practice. This paper, therefore, aims to understand governments' assessment context and provide a cross-continental comparison of their VfM assessment.

Faced with different domestic contexts (e.g. aging infrastructure, population growth, and competing demands on finance), governments tend to place different emphases when undertaking the VfM assessment. In line with the theory of boundary spanning, a cross-continental comparison is conducted between three of the most noticeable PPP markets (i.e. the United Kingdom, Australia and China) about their VfM assessment. The institutional level is interpreted by a social, economic and political framework, and the methodological level is elucidated through a qualitative and quantitative VfM assessment.

There are individual institutional characteristics that have shaped the way each country assesses VfM. For the methodological level, we identify that: (1) these global markets use a public sector comparator as the benchmark in VfM assessment; (2) ambiguous qualitative assessment is conducted only against PPPs to strengthen their policy development; (3) Australia's priority is in service provision whereas that of the UK and China is project finance and production; and (4) all markets are seeking an amelioration of existing controversial VfM assessments so that purported VfM relates to project lifecycles. As such, an option framework is proposed to make headway towards a sensible selection of infrastructure procurement approaches in the post COVID-19 era.

This study addresses a current void of enhancing the decision-making process for using PPPs within today's changing environment and then opens up an avenue for future empirical research to examine the option framework and ensuing VfM decisions. Practically, it presents a holistic VfM landscape for public sector procurers that aim to engage with PPPs for their infrastructure interventions.

Uncertainty, a state of unknowing linked to threats and opportunities, is a key characteristic of megaprojects, making it challenging for government officials and politicians to decide on their initiation. For them, implementation by the private sector adds an extra layer of complexity and uncertainty to megaproject planning. In this context, only a few studies have focussed on governing and the mobilization of uncertainty arguments in communication between government actors and private developers either in favour of or against megaprojects. The purpose of this article is to shed light on how private megaproject proposals progress towards political acceptance or rejection in public decision-making.

This process of public decision-making on private megaproject proposals is examined in the case of the Helsinki–Tallinn undersea rail tunnel. In line with the interpretive research tradition, the authors’ study draws on a qualitative methodology underpinned by social constructionism. The research process can be characterized as abductive.

The authors’ findings suggest that while public decision-making on megaprojects is a conflictual and dynamic process, some types of uncertainty are relatively more important in affecting the perceived feasibility of the projects in the eyes of public sector decision-makers.

This study contributes to the debate on uncertainty management in megaprojects, proposing a new type of uncertainty – uncertainty about privateness – which has not been explicitly visible thus far.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the impacts of the investment programs created by the Brazilian federal government on private investment in transportation infrastructure (crowding-in effect).

The study used two quantitative techniques of data analysis: cluster analysis and panel data analysis.

The results show that the investment programs created by the Brazilian federal government were successful in attracting private agents to invest in transportation infrastructure in the country. This effect is observed even in the cases of programs focused on public investments.

Advancing the research area that seeks to assess the impact of public policies is the main practical and social implications of the papers. As a research limitation we can highlight that need for a comparison to other country investment’s public policies.

Performance of public policies.

Economic development.

The paper discusses the effects of the Brazilian Federal Government programs for infrastructure investment in the private investment in the country (investment in transportation infrastructure). The issue is relevant for policies makers.

Existing public–private partnership (PPP) literature that explicitly adopts neo-institutional theory, tends to elucidate the impact of isomorphic pressures and organizational fields and structuration on PPP projects. This paper advances this literature by presenting the institutional work and micro-level dynamics through which actors initiate and implement a new form of project delivery. The authors show how actors enact responses to institutional structuration in the expansion and transformation of an airport from a public entity into a PPP in Saudi Arabia.

The authors use a single case study design that offers an empirically rich and thick description of events such as the dynamic processes, practices and types of institutional work carried out by actors and organizations to deliver the project under investigation.

Religious symbolic work as social integration triggered system integration work, which expanded the power capabilities of individual actors leading the project. Repair work then followed to alleviate the negative effects of disempowering the agency of actors negatively affected by the PPP model and to streamline the project implementation process.

This research offers several practical implications. For PPPs to operate successfully in contexts similar to the Gulf region, policymakers should provide strong political support and be willing to bear a considerable risk of losses or minimal outcomes during the early phases of experimentation with PPPs. Also, policymakers should not only focus their attention on technical requirements of PPPs but also associate new meanings with the normative and cultural-cognitive elements that are integral to the success of PPP implementation. In order to design strategies for change that are designed to fit the unique cultural and sociopolitical settings of each country, policymakers should empower capable individual actors and provide them with resources and access to power, which will enable them to enforce changes that diverge from institutionalized practices.

This research connected the PPP literature with theoretical frameworks drawn from neo-institutional theory and power. It would be valuable for further research, however, to connect ideas from the PPP literature with other disciplines such as psychology and social entrepreneurship. PPP research examines a recent phenomenon that can potentially be combined with non-traditional streams of research in analyzing projects. Expanding the realm of PPP research beyond traditional theoretical boundaries could potentially yield exciting insights into how the overall institutional and psychological environments surrounding projects affect their initiation and implementation.

The paper contributes new insights regarding the roles of religious symbolic work, allied with social and system integration of power relations in implementing PPP projects. It suggests a theoretical shift from structures and organizational fields – macro- and meso-levels of analysis – to individuals – micro-level – as triggers of new forms of project delivery that break with the status quo.

Funding infrastructural facilities of higher institutions, especially in some developing nations such as Nigeria, that is under-funded, is a challenge in the current era. Private organisations participation in infrastructure development via a proposed expanded corporate social responsibility (ECSR) may enhance infrastructural facilities provision. There is a paucity of literature regarding ECSR, a form of infrastructure tax relief providing infrastructural facilities for higher institutions. Therefore, the study investigated the role of private organisations via a proposed ECSR in the provision of infrastructure and proffer ways to enhance higher institutions' infrastructure development delivery in Nigeria.

The study data were collated via face-to-face interviews and observation of existing buildings. From the six geo-political zones, two higher institutions each were selected for a good representation across Nigeria. Saturation was achieved with 26 participants interviewed. The emerged three main themes were analysed via thematic analysis.

Findings show inadequate infrastructure development in Nigerian higher institutions. Lack of policy and institutional framework, lax governance, level of transparency, and corruption, emerged as the key issues that may hinder private organisations from participating in public higher institutions infrastructure development delivery in Nigeria via ECSR. Others are lack of autonomy, inadequate planning, high level of impunity, political affiliation, poor management, and access to funding. The study proffers some recommendations based on these findings.

This research is restricted to the role of private organisations via ECSR in infrastructure development (buildings) in Nigeria's public higher institutions. Future study is needed to validate the proposed ECSR framework in developing countries for the provision of buildings for higher institutions in their host communities.

The paper will advance the philosophy of corporate social responsibility to the provision of building facilities in host communities' higher institutions by private companies through tax relief and supported by a proposed Presidential Executive Order.

The proposed ECSR framework can be used to improve building facilities in Nigeria's higher institutions. This may assist and stir up policymakers to explore the proposed model and back up with an established policy such as infrastructure tax relief (ITR) for implementation.

This article critically analyses the extent to which selected Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) transportation projects in the Caribbean subregion embrace good practices and how they benefit the public sector.

The article begins with the general rationale of PPPs, leading to a discussion on the specific challenges of the Caribbean subregion and an assessment of certain critical projects. The sample cases include the L F Wade International Airport in Bermuda, the cruise berthing and cargo port redevelopment project in the Cayman Islands, and the Sanger International Airport in Jamaica. There are five aspects to the critical assessment: (a) an evaluation of the type of PPP arrangement used; (b) the legal/policy framework; (c) financial implications; (d) accountability; and (e) miscellaneous data. Desk-based research is conducted as supported by both international and local sources to convey a uniquely local perspective in this under-researched area of scholarship.

PPP frameworks in the Caribbean are improving quickly but remain a work in progress. Jamaica leads the region. Bermuda trails behind. Problems of legal compliance with frameworks and limited market engagement persist, leading to risk management problems.

This article fills a literature gap on critical analysis of individual Caribbean PPP transportation projects. Previous reports, mostly by international organisations, cover regional or sectorial trends. Other sources take a descriptive but not critical approach.