Participation, Barriers, and Opportunities in PFI: The United Kingdom Experience

Abstract

Private Finance Initiative (PFI) projects play an increasingly important role for both the UK government and the construction sector. It is still a relatively new form of procurement that requires a wide range of specialist advice during the bidding stage and in-depth knowledge of how the facility will perform in the long term. This paper investigates the level of participation in PFI projects in the UK, the opportunities available for the construction sector, the types of problems experienced and the challenges for the future. It achieves this by analyzing the results of a questionnaire survey of a large number of client and construction organizations. The study finds that there is a wide gap in the level of PFI experience between client and construction organizations, affordability of PFI projects and high bidding costs are key issues for client and construction organizations respectively and, given the nature of PFI projects, there is considerable scope for knowledge transfer both during the project and between different PFI projects.

Proactive Measures of Governmental Debt Guarantees to Facilitate Public-Private Partnerships Project

“…Two recent studies (Carrillo et al 2008;Chan et al 2010) reported that the difficulty of finding financial partners due to their limited interest is a key obstacle to PPP. Thus, the long and complex procurement process, from preferred bidder stage to financial closing stage, may cause substantial delays.…”

The Public Sector's Perspective on Procuring Public Works Projects ‐ Comparing the Views of Practitioners in Hong Kong and Australia

“…This response was also mentioned twice by the Australian interviewees. From previous literature it has also been recorded that one of the main advantages of involving the private sector is to add value to public projects in terms of their efficiency, expertise and management skills when compared to those of the public sector (Yescombe 2007;Carrillo et al 2008;Leiringer 2006;Chiang and Cheng 2009). Other response mentioned by the Hong Kong interviewees included "Using a Public Sector Comparator", which was also mentioned by the Efficiency Unit (2003) of the HKSAR government as necessary whenever public money is involved.…”

“…The importance of partnership spirit was also identified by Gunnigan and Eaton (2006). Mentioned the most frequently by Australian interviewees was "Competitive procurement process" (Jefferies et al 2002) at five times, followed by "Skilled and experienced parties" (Drew 2005;Kumaraswamy and Anvuur 2008) at four times, "Champion" (Efficiency Unit 2008a) and "Clear milestones" (Civic Exchange et al 2005) both three times and "Economic business case" (Chege 2001), "Government support" (Qiao et al 2001) and "Value for money" (Heald, 2003) all twice. Mentioned the most by Hong Kong interviewees was "Appropriate risk allocation" (Li et al 2005) at four times, "Public consultation" (Kanakoudis 2007) at three times and "Well prepared (3) Contract terms (4) Contractor's performance (2) Contractor's performance (2) Resources saved (2) Project performance (2) Risk Management (2) (4) Competitive procurement process (5) Public consultation (3) Skilled and experienced parties (4) Project objectives well defined (3) Project objectives well defined (3) Well prepared contract/document (2) Champion ( 4.6.…”

Improving Economic Efficiency of Public-Private Partnerships for Infrastructure Development by Contractual Flexibility Analysis in a Highly Uncertain Context

“…Li et al [2005] identified appropriate risk allocation as one of the six CSFs for PPP projects. Carrillo et al [2008], according to the U.K. experience, mentioned that transfer of risks by welldefined contracts is one of the CSFs. Zhang [2005b] classified CSFs into five categories, one of which was appropriate risk allocation.…”