Public private partnerships: the provision of healthcare infrastructure in Australia

The emergence of Public-Private Sector Partnerships (PPPs) provides a means for developing infrastructure without directly impacting upon the budgetary constraints of Government. Social infrastructure projects (schools, hospitals, prisons et al) are characterised as generally being smaller in scale than economic infrastructure projects (motorways, bridges, tunnels et al). However, by their very nature, social infrastructure projects also tend to be complex, particularly in terms of on-going involvement with the community. Thus, private sector bidders for social infrastructure PPPs are often presented with a situation where operational complexity, including government policy toward the sharing of revenue, is one of the key differences in whether PPPs are as attractive for social infrastructure compared with economic infrastructure. This research centres on how consortiums manage the many risk factors involved and the results are presented from a case study of a hospital PPP project. This paper presents the preliminary findings of the case study research and in particular focuses on the process for selecting the PPP consortium and the research methodology.