Public-Private-Partnership

Quick Review about PPP in Green Infrastructure:

As mentioned in this week’s BRISTOL case study. To build the green infrastructure, especially for the very large city-wide green infrastructure projects, PPP (Public-Private-Partnership) is a very commonly used arrangement nowadays. There are many types of PPP arrangements, such as BT (Build-Transfer), TOT (Transfer-Operate-Transfer), BOT (Build-Operate-Transfer) etc.

Generally speaking, PPP is a cooperative arrangement between the government and private companies on the construction of city infrastructures. All sectors will sign the contract to clear the rights and obligations to ensure the infrastructure completed successfully, and achieve the final results that could not be obtained by unilateral actions. All risks and profits will be shared. The PPP cooperation could not only be limited in the national level, but it could also be the worldwide cooperation, for example, there are many green infrastructure projects participated by a couple of countries’ governments and private funds by using PPP arrangement in Asian. I made the following picture to show you the relationship among key players and their functions.

Figure 1. Relationship and functions of key players

SWOT Analysis on PPP:

SWOT model can be applied to analyze the PPP arrangement, and identify how PPP is related to green infrastructure.

Strength:

The PPP is just started and green infrastructure market is very flexibly demand-orientated, the private companies could adapt to the market easily. The government usually has large financial pressure on high-cost green infrastructure projects, so that they introduce the private sectors to help the construction, and authorize the private sectors with the operation rights to generate profits. As the partner of the government, the private sectors could have less financing difficulties with a bank or other institutions. Private companies can use more advanced skills to manage the resources efficiently compared with the government, and they have more new planning ideas and practical patent technologies about green infrastructure. PPP is a win-win arrangement.

Weakness:

Compared to the government, private sectors have less bargain power and less risk affordability. PPP projects usually have longer negotiation period because of different concerns for different sectors. The negotiation cost would be a large portion of the total green infrastructure cost.

Opportunity:

Because PPP is a really fresh innovation and green infrastructure is a long-term plan, the market demand is still very huge. As PPP is win-win for both sectors, PPP arrangement gets supported and develops very fast, for example, PPP fund and projects have grown to 244 Billion US Dollars just in half a year period from 2016 December to 2017 June in China. For Green Infrastructure and relevant industry, PPP will become the first choice. Our Civil Students should be equipped with PPP knowledge, and it will also be our opportunity to achieve something in this field.

Threaten:

For high-tech green infrastructure plans and new sustainable ideas, the complex government examine and approval processes could depress some private companies, which means we would loss many opportunities to show our capabilities. The relevant laws and regulations are not well-established, which could affect our work in the near future. Another important point is from the public views, because the public opinions could make a big difference on green infrastructure decisions.

If you like this post, or you think it is helpful somehow, please up-vote. I would like to discuss and share more ideas about PPP with you.

Reference:

Retrieved September 22, 2017, from http://www.bridata.com/front/index

Retrieved September 22, 2017, from http://www.zeidei.com/article/1526895.html

Our education at UBC has an intentionally fragmented setup which might make it challenging for us to see the interconnections between the various fields of Civil Engineering, and the opportunities available for us, as Engineers to optimize the systems for an ecological and human benefit. Green Infrastructure is one of the primary topics covered in CIVL 498A. It is a very broad concept spanning various fields of Civil Engineering from Transportation, to Structural Engineering, to Stormwater Control. Various components of GI are shown in Figure 1 below.

Figure 1: Visible Benefits of Green Infrastructure

This blog post summarises the issues surrounding scientific research of Green Infrastructure (GI), as covered in detail here. It is meant to be a compliment to the article, and I highly recommend reading the article in its entirety. The following are the challenges in studying GI from a research perspective.

· GI features and/or elements

GI encompasses a wide variety of areas from ponds, to green roofs to bee hives (as shown in Figure 2). Monitoring the effects of these GI elements is difficult, if not impossible. GI elements such as green roofs are easier to study and monitor, and hence, garner more attention.

· Cost and benefits of GI

Costs are divided between the Financial costs & Opportunity costs. The resources used on constructing the GI elements are considered Financial costs. The benefit that would be obtained from those resources spent elsewhere would be considered the Opportunity cost. GI is most effective when thought of while improvements in present infrastructure are being made. For example, incorporating wildlife corridors when overhauling a highway system.

Benefits of GI are more qualitative than quantitative. Some indicators of GI benefits are: the quality of green spaces, the amount of sequestered carbon, the increase in employment after GI implementation. Figure 3 below attempts to describe the qualitative values of GI.

· Evaluating GI

The main goal of GI is the protection of ecological functions while simultaneously benefiting humans. When a GI element does not provide one of the two, or favors one over the other, that is an indicator of a poorly designed GI element. Policy, guidelines and standards are needed before any serious evaluation of GI can be undertaken.

· Multi-level evaluation

Since GI can be of different scales, it might be more effective to take a Systems Thinking approach. Additionally, analyzing not just the GI alone, but the institutions that manage (government agencies, etc) and use (transportation agencies, etc) these systems should be undertaken.

Conclusion

I believe that bringing to light the challenges in studying GI will lead to development of qualitative as well as quantitative methods of measuring GI impacts. As future Engineers, by knowing these challenges, we might be able to better justify implementing GI in our projects when posed with questions about their benefits.

References:

Figure 1

Figure 2

Figure 3

Month: September 2017

Public-Private-Partnership

Public-Private-Partnership

Issues Surrounding Scientific Research of Green Infrastructure (GI)