Exploring potential success factors for procurement of privately financed infrastructure

Australia has joined many governments to adopt public-private partnership (PPP) as a major strategy for procuring infrastructure for decades. However, failures have occurred although the market has been considered to be a mature and sophisticated one. Failures have typically been traced back to inappropriate economic evaluation and a lack of value-for-money. In particular, a literature review has identified that there was no holistic consideration on the evaluation of procurement transactions of PPP projects. The transaction costs of PPPs were not handled properly. In this paper, theories of transaction cost economics are proposed for the purpose of such a holistic institutional economic evaluation. These theories are analysed in order to identify potential critical success factors for a strategic infrastructure procurement framework. The potential critical success factors are identified and grouped into a number of categories that match the theories of transaction cost economics. These categories include (1) Asset Specificity, (2) Organizational Capability, (3) Transaction Frequency, (4) Behavioural Uncertainty, and (5) Environmental Uncertainty. These potential critical success factors may be subject to an empirical test in the future. The proposed framework will offer decision makers with an insight into project life cycle economic outcomes needed to successfully deliver PPPs.