Public strongPrivatestrong Partnerships and Public Procurement.pdfVIP

Agenda, Volume 14, Number 2, 2007, pages 171-188 Public Private Partnerships and Public Procurement Darrin Grimsey and Mervyn Lewis ublic Private Partnerships (PPPs) rarely get good press, and public opinion is quick to condemn a PPP that does not succeed as a failure of the concept P itself. Perhaps it is because, as Tony Harris, one of the staunchest critics of PPPs, once observed … good news stories receive little attention in public … . The private infrastructure projects which appear less credible … get rather more attention (Harris, 1998:11). His successor as NSW Auditor-General, Bob Sendt, admitted that the public — and possibly the political — mood has certainly turned against PPPs as a result of the Cross City Tunnel (Sendt, 2006:3). While many in the community may remain suspicious of private sector involvement in public infrastructure, the reality is that old command and control structures in the public sector are breaking down and are being replaced by new interrelationships between government and private sector entities. Rather than as an aberration, PPPs (or perhaps more correctly traditional PPPs) need to be viewed as one form of public procurement, supported by many hybrid approaches that blur the lines between them and conventional procurement methods. This article examines this evolving marketplace. It begins by comparing conventional forms of public procurement with traditional PPPs, and then reviews the relative performance, and advantages and disadvantages, of these alternatives. PPPs are argued to introduce very different incentive structures and responsibilities into the procurement process.