Experience on a PPP-based High Speed Road Maintenance Project in Hong Kong

Abstract

There is a growing trend for governments worldwide to explore new routes for procuring infrastructure facilities, such as various forms of Public-Private Partnerships (PPP), due to restricted fiscal budgets and an increasing demand for infrastructure facilities. Many practitioners and researchers believe that PPP can harness flexibility, encourage innovation, enhance productivity, allow better risk allocation, increase value–for-money, and improve costeffectiveness by involving the private sector in the provision of public services. A Work Department of the HKSAR Government (the Department) has recently introduced the concept of PPP into their road maintenance programmes – the High Speed Road Maintenance Contract. The project is an interesting challenge to relevant public authority as the form of contract, project organisation, risk allocation and points of responsibility are totally novel. Most of the infrastructure projects using PPP approach are of much larger scale and are in the form of PFI so that the private sector is responsible for financing, constructing and maintaining the road network. The experience gained from this project, and especially its success would improve our understanding on whether PPP is suitable for similar road maintenance projects around the world. Before investigation of the success level of the new project, it is important to study the view and standpoint of the stakeholders on the issue of PPP as the human factor is believed to be a crucial contributor to the success of PPP. The paper begins by outlining the nature of the PPP high speed road maintenance project. As there is potential for the Department to extend the use of PPP approach to other road maintenance projects, a questionnaire survey conducted with other potential stakeholders of future PPP projects of a similar kind are presented to examine the effectiveness of the new PPP contract from their perspective.