Institutional and Strategic Barriers to Public-Private Partnership - Assignment Example

252462 INTRODUCTION Keeping in view of the growing importance of the PPP in the construction field, poised to spread its tentacles into other fields in future, the research proposal is drawn for exploring a possible role for the PPP in the area of its ever-growing influence over the construction sector, and hence, over the construction management region. This research proposal deals with a framework for stakeholder engagement for Public Private Partnership (PPP) in mass housing projects and the stakeholder suitability therein. PPP, in recent years has shown immense capability of effectively participating in the mass housing programmes. It has come into the housing project in a big way and is showing every sign of remaining there as a collaborator to the public sector, a move that has been proving beneficial to all concerned. It is important to understand the extent to which the capability of PPP could be made use of. PPP has been gaining steady importance in the construction field, and under the circumstances, has been even viewed as inevitable. Any collaboration between public sector and the private companies for projects are referred to as the Public Private Partnership (PPP). The Labour Government has been very keen in expanding PPP into most of the fields because this partnership can not only bring more efficiency into the public sector projects, but also the investment that is very necessary. Private sector has shown the determination of investing in the public projects and wait for the returns. It is said that unencumbered with bureaucratic approach that plagues the public bodies, private parties can move, plan and work quicker than their public counterparts. The government also hopes that the tax-payers money is safer in this partnership supported by the skills, knowledge, technology and financial knowhow of the private sector. The Labour Government seems to have realised the importance and valuable contribution of such a partnership in various fields. It is a fact that PPP has ventured into the construction area very effectively and its future opportunities in other areas are still tentative. As a firm part of the construction management, PPP and its work modes and approach deserve a closer look from the research perspective. With the increasing mobility that the partnership has procured in recent years, it definitely deserves research backing and is already presenting many research gaps and possibilities that could be useful for the construction management and to the stakeholders involved. HYPOTHESIS This research proposal will explore and evaluate the framework for the PPP in the housing arena. Main proposal is for evaluating and assessing the framework for PPP conducted mass housing projects mainly based on stakeholder engagement. It is evident that very little research is conducted on this particular hypothesis and the current research will seek to rectify this inadequacy. This proposal will probe into the suitability of PPP in solving the housing problems. It will try to understand how this factor could benefit the end user. A lot of current dissatisfaction about the housing facilities is solvable and this study will probe into the capability of PPP in doing so. SCOPE OF THE RESEARCH The role of the PPP is getting clearer primarily as a financial effort. It is considered now as a more feasible way of construction management and the tie-ups are proving beneficial. But the possible variations in this field of joint venture are many and are yet to be explored. As PPP is now regarded as an integral part of the construction world, it is significant that more and more research is conducted in this area, which will definitely be useful in the long run by providing important information that would definitely help altering the traditional construction outlook. Change of conceptions in the construction management has been overdue especially so in the mass housing projects. Environment has come into construction as a major and inescapable demand and this has changed the housing project requirements to a very large extent. This also means that outside knowhow is desperately required in the housing projects. Every house or project that is going to be taken up now has to provide many environmental alternatives and this demand is going to entirely change the traditional building framework. We had never considered the environmental point of view in the past, as it was not felt as an immediate necessity and the population was highly limited. With the growing population mass housing projects have become an absolute necessity to eradicate the lack of housing. At the same time, environment requirements are the ruling necessities of present and future. With the help of PPP, modern requirements are considered to be easier and more authentic, mainly because the skills and resources of both public and private sectors are available. Hence, the necessity of research in this field has become almost unavoidable. AIM OF THE RESEARCH With the concept of PP partnerships coming into focus, case studies are gaining importance. Methodologies of contracting, inevitable changes in the traditional field, different concepts of maintenance and operations are gaining popularity. Private financing has become acceptable in recent years, sometimes for the entire project and sometimes, partial, and thus, the entire operation needs research guidance. Partnership agreements, public liability details, regulatory requirements applied to all the stakeholders under the changed circumstances etc. have come into focus. Project delivery, partnership agreement language, long-term implications and the areas where PPP could be utilised to the maximum advantage of all the stakeholders have gained immense importance in the altered outlook of mass housing projects. Under the current PPP standpoint, it is necessary to assess many issues like feedback systems, environmental accountability, public safety, managing the workers and make them accountable for their own safety and the safety of their fellow-workers, understanding the various steps of project control, possible legal issues that might threaten the project and how to avoid such pitfalls, training, control and frequent inspection of the work force, making use of new and emerging technologies, aiming at the peak of performance and the significance and necessity of cost evaluation in construction have to be explored from all the research angles. This may lead to end user satisfaction about construction product available at present and in the future. PPP as a stakeholder has to work within a certain framework in the housing projects and research is absolutely necessary to explore the reach and diversity of this framework that would be relevant to the future projects. LIMITATIONS There are many limitations to this research, because it is difficult, at this point, to foresee all the eventualities that might occur. Circumstances change and the end-result will also change accordingly. Housing sector has become a rather volatile field today, after stagnating for decades. It has become mercurial and the demands are mounting and diverse. This will place a constraint on the research as it has to move forward blindly. It also has to depend more on the past and the achievements and failures of the past, instead of planning for the future. Despite these limitations, from the past, research will try to draw conclusions and possibilities. From the present, depending on the various interviews and outside resources, the research will try to arrive at solutions and answers. This can be taken as one of the initial attempts to understand the PPP, hoping that this attempt will be followed by many more successive research possibilities. METHODOLOGY A structured and detailed questionnaire will be able to collect all the primary data needed for the research. Various questionnaires will be addressed to the main stakeholders and the end-users for their answers and points of view. The results and the achievements gained by the earlier PPP projects will be collected and analysed as case studies showing both positive and negative results. This research is not hoping to support the PPP participation. Instead, it will focus on flattering and unflattering aspects both, and will analyse the pros and cons dispassionately. In addition, research will depend upon many secondary sources like reports, books, work schedules, plans, charts, graphs, journals, frameworks, peer assessments, circulars, work conclusions, supervisory reports, correspondence between the public and private sectors, interaction with the government and quasi-government agencies connected with the construction ventures, financial institution assessments, reports to the financial institutions etc. It will also try to draw from the tenant assessment, council assessments, impressions of the different stakeholders in the field, reports of the resource providers etc. LITERATURE REVIEW The research will depend upon many standard measuring tools, one being the quality assessment of the PPP housing projects by measuring it from the point of view of the end-users and their satisfaction. Another suitability measurement will depend upon the transparent involved in the project and how it has worked for the benefit of the taxpayer and the stakeholders. It will try to find out a possible framework for the PPP in the housing sector, from the connected players, with their personal opinion about the plus and minuses of such a framework. It will also give an opportunity to such stakeholders to air their personal point of view to express their preferences, which might prove valuable to the research and the PPP ultimately. The third important criteria will remain as the equality of treatment. The research will try to find out the justice and equal treatment behind all the moves like bidding, proposal presentation, work environment, treatment of workers, treatment of end-users etc. and will try to establish the equality of treatment in the PPP mass housing project framework and will evaluate the equality or lack of it. Usually PPP projects are long-term partnerships of sometimes a few decades and this also mean that these projects will touch the lives of many people and communities and cost a tidy sum. The sad fact here is that the private partner is at an unenviable position of risking his investments for a very long time. Unlike his public sector partner, he does not possess the luxury of outsourcing. This needs long-term strategy from his company and the capability of bearing the brunt of long term investment that will be tied up for a long time without return. PPP will take all the risks to complete the project at the earliest so that the returns could be gained and the public sector could depend upon the PPP for steady flow of work, fast achievement and a string of non-core services, but they do not include the core services like justice, police supervision or public school system, (Tetrenova, 2006). This point of view was supported by the Scottish Government publications which says that according to the available evidence, it is strongly proved that the PPP transfers most of the construction risks to the private sector and this defies the historical and traditional pathways of procurement methods and is considered to be a better method of achieving the maximum value for money and the services like water, health etc. are provided at a much lower cost and more efficiently compared to the earlier reports, http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/05/05153838/38399 Talking mainly about the financial and service support, many recent researchers have agreed that the finance availability has resulted in better service procurement in the housing sector through PPP. PPPs including Private Finance initiatives are capable of providing better value for money to the Public Sector by creating modern and excellent service available only in the private sector, (Al-Sharif1 and Kaka) http://166.111.44.134/PPPtopicCoverageInConstructionMgmtJournals.pdf PPPs are increasingly used now and the public sector has accepted this new option which would ease off much of the tension and bitterness prevailing in the housing sector and enhance its scope and reachability. Hence, investigation into the working norms and success factors of PPP housing projects and construction policies cannot be out of place. This research will also try to provide a fair assessment of the approaches employed by the PPP and the way in which it bases its risk management. PPP has a long term contractual arrangement with the public sector agency where most of the risk and the resources are shared by keeping in mind the development and refurbishment of public facilities, (Norment, 2000 cited in Li et al). This research will also try to understand the potential risks faced both the partners, especially in the housing projects and how both could be protected from such risks. It is not possible to say that this is an absolutely new venture, because many writers have argued that this was not so and private and public sectors pooling resources to provide public services was a traditional idea, (Walker and Smith, 1995). One of the descriptions of PPP come from the Dutch angle, which says that they could be defined as co-operation of an educing character between the two actors, public and private to develop services and products with shared risk, costs and benefits, (Klijn, 2003). It is necessary to note here that not many books or researched articles are available on the topic. There is no doubt that the topic is covered by many researchers while researching other branches of construction management. It has been touched upon very often by eminent researchers, but usually in a small way, as a matter of secondary importance. Very few works are available exclusively dedicated for the research of PPP alone, even though in recent years, there has been a steady growth of such research material. There is a possibility of this research helping to overcome some of the necessities that should have been covered by research. CONCLUSION It is important to acknowledge that the PPP has come to stay and there is no possibility of a reversal in its roles. It is clear that at this moment, PPP has been clearly regarded as the winner over the traditionally available construction frameworks in the field. This does not mean that all are enthusiastic about the PPP and we are aware that many public sector unions are opposed to the idea. Workers too are sceptical about the outcome. As it defies the traditional housing norms, even the end-users are unclear about the role and the framework of PPP’s working capabilities. It will take a long time for the PPP to establish its credentials to the satisfaction of the general public. Once it does so, it will be easier for PPP to expand into other sectors with greater ease. Researches like the current one can provide a great amount of help in making matters easier for all the connected. The current proposal is presented with the awareness that a lot of research work is yet to go into the PPP in action in the mass construction projects. As the PPP is a comparatively recent venture, and an unprecedented one at that, I feel that research chinks like the one explained here, are present in the field providing tremendous scope for the researchers to explore research possibilities. BIBLIOGRAPHY: 1. Al-Sharif1, Faisal and Kaka, Ammar, PFI/PPP TOPIC COVERAGE IN CONSTRUCTION JOURNALS, School of the Built Environment. Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh EH14 4AS, p.712. http://166.111.44.134/PPPtopicCoverageInConstructionMgmtJournals.pdf 2. Klijn, Erik-Hans and Teisman, Geert R. (2003), Institutional and Strategic Barriers to Public–Private Partnership: An Analysis of Dutch Cases, CIPFA, 2003, p.137. 3. Li, Bing, Akintoye, Akintola and Hardcastle, Cliff, VFM and Risk Allocation Models in Construction PPP Projects, http://www.arcom.ac.uk/workshops/04-Edinburgh/06-Li.pdf 4. Tetrenova, Libena (2006), Theoretical and Practical Aspects of PPP Projects, VADYBA / MANAGEMENT, Nr. 3–4 (12–13), p.106. http://166.111.44.134/PPPtopicCoverageInConstructionMgmtJournals.pdf 5. Walker C. and Smith A. J. (1994) Privatized infrastructure: the BOT approach, Thomas Telford Publications, London. ONLINE SOURCES: 1. http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Publications/2005/05/05153838/38399 2. http://166.111.44.134/PPPtopicCoverageInConstructionMgmtJournals.pdf 3. Read More