Public-private-people-partnership (4P) for disaster preparedness, mitigation and post-disaster reconstruction

Abstract

Post-disaster reconstruction, critical in restoring the affected community, provides new opportunities to redevelop the disaster affected region for economic growth, future vulnerability reduction and sustainable development as well. However, previous studies reveal that these opportunities have not been fully exploited. Many reconstruction projects have performed poorly due to various political, administrational, social, and policy/regulation-related reasons.

To address the spotlighted gaps in post-disaster reconstruction, Public-Private-People Partnership (4P) is proposed and developed to procure more sustainable public infrastructure and to improve the overall performance of disaster management (DM) through integrating preparedness and mitigation into reconstruction processes. Public- Private Partnerships (PPP), which have demonstrated superior performance compared to the traditional approach in many infrastructure projects, are the practical and theoretical foundation of the proposed 4P. The integrated 4th P-‘people’ refers to major stakeholders who play critical roles in reconstruction, namely Non-Governmental Organizations (NGOs), local communities, academia, professional groups and media.

A 4P framework, comprising of a procurement framework and a partnership framework, was developed based on the consolidated findings from a literature review and empirical data. The procurement framework provides a three-stage procurement process to deliver a typical 4P project, including planning for post-disaster reconstruction procurement, establishing framework agreement and 4P delivery. Through pre-disaster arrangements formally linking potential participants in advance, it enables targeted 4Ps to mobilize faster, while being more efficient and sustainable. The partnership framework provides the corner-stone of establishing sustainable and successful relationships among multiple participants, to ensure smooth execution of 4P projects. Developed on significant findings from previous research on partnerships/relationship management in the construction industry, it describes the partnership structure, role of each major participant and institutional and relational strategies to improve the partnership/relationship.

A comprehensive research design enabled collection of the data required to achieve each objective of this research project. The first-round semi-structured interviews were conducted to mainly investigate the feasibility of applying PPP in reconstruction and integrating ‘people’ into PPP, so as to narrow down the potential scope of the proposed 4P. Findings from the first-round interviews, current practice and pitfalls in the DM cycle especially in reconstruction were examined in the subsequent two parallel sets of questionnaire surveys targeting DM and PPP professionals. The results derived from 14 first-round interviews and 81 responses received in the questionnaires clearly suggest that 4P has great potential to deliver better performance in reconstruction projects of certain types. Nine second-round interviews helped to test and improve the established preliminary 4P framework. In addition, to further probe into the role of ‘people’, case studies of ‘Project Mingde’, which comprises of three construction projects including a Sichuan reconstruction project, were implemented. The proposed 4P framework, developed based on the above research, was validated through a focus group meeting.

It is concluded that the 4P approach could help realize better performance and sustainable redevelopment in appropriate reconstruction scenarios, as well as contribute to improving the overall DM. The 4P framework also provides a basic methodology and conceptual foundation to procure 4P projects in industry with pointers for future development in academic research.