Review on criteria for evaluating unsolicited public–private partnership PPP proposals from 2004 to 2018

Abstract

Unsolicited projects (USPs) in public–private partnership (PPP) projects need careful assessment and evaluation prior to implementation. Although interests in reviewing general trends in managing Unsolicited projects of PPP is drawing attentions, there is a lack of a systematic review of PPP literature on critical criteria for evaluating USPs worldwide. This paper aims to address this gap by methodically conducting an in-depth review through a three-stage systematic process. A systematic desktop search was conducted, followed by the selection of related papers on USPs. A list of 27 criteria for evaluating USPs was identified from 46 selected papers drawn from some selected top tier academic journals from 2004 to 2018 (years inclusive). The finding shows an increase in criteria since 2005 for USPs evaluation. Most identified criteria within the time frame of 2004 to 2018 are outstanding innovative proposal, optimal value for money, appropriate risk allocation mechanism, financial capabilities of proponent, Professional and technical capabilities of proposers, accountability and transparency, intellectual property conditions and competitive bidding procurement among others. This provides an overview of evaluation criteria for USPs. The checklist of criteria for evaluating USPs could be adopted for further empirical studies.

Keywords:

• Public private partnership
• unsolicited proposals
• solicited proposals
• evaluation criteria

Acknowledgements

This paper forms part of a PhD research project on Managing Unsolicited Proposals in Public–Private Partnership Infrastructure Procurement. The authors acknowledge that this paper shares a similar background and methodology with other related papers, but with different scopes and objectives. The research project is undertaken in the Department of Construction Technology and Management, at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana. Finally, the authors are exceedingly grateful to the editors and anonymous reviewers whose invaluable comments and suggestions substantially helped in improving the quality of this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).