Procuring infrastructure public-private partnerships: capability development and learning from an owner perspective

Abstract

The expanding application of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in infrastructure development and public service delivery has posed numerous commercial challenges for public sector owners (PSOs) regarding their capabilities to initiate, procure and manage PPP projects. This paper starts from the important role of owner project capabilities in infrastructure delivery and explores how PSOs learn to develop new commercial capabilities to match the PPP context. We draw on a qualitative single-case study of a state-owned enterprise in the Chinese context, which at the time of the study was in the early stages of applying the PPP approach in procuring metro line projects. The finding indicates the process of how the PSO learned to establish and develop the necessary owner commercial capabilities to procure infrastructure PPPs for the first time, such as the abilities to define project scope, procure, and manage suppliers. It sheds light on the roles of different types of learning mechanisms – experience accumulation, knowledge articulation, and knowledge codification – on capability development for PPPs over time from an owner perspective.

Keywords:

• Owner project capabilities
• infrastructure PPPs
• public sector owners
• capability development
• learning mechanisms
• commercial capabilities

Acknowledgement

The help from respondents at the case organisation is highly appreciated. Special thanks to the editor, associate editor and reviewers for their constructive comments in improving the paper. The study is funded by the Postgraduate Scholarship from the University of Hong Kong, supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 72101220), the Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Providence (No. 2022J05001), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 20720220114).

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Data availability statement

The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Notes

1 In this paper, we follow the initial conceptualisation and use the term owner project capabilities consistently. Elsewhere in the literature, the term client project capabilities, client capabilities, or owner capabilities are also used.

2 The China PPP Centre was established by the MoF in December 2014 to promote PPP development and collect data of PPP projects around the nation. https://www.cpppc.org:8082/inforpublic/homepage.html#/projectPublic

3 The PPP process in China has five main stages, namely identification, preparation, procurement, implementation, and transfer, according to the national guidelines. The data collection mainly covered the three first stages.

Additional information

Funding

This study was supported by the postgraduate scholarship from the University of Hong Kong, supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 72101220), Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province (2022J05001), Science and Technology Project of Xiamen Construction Bureau (XJK2022-1-5), as well as the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (No. 20720220114).