Chapter 7: Implementation Strategy

As the team debated its recommendations and implementation actions during the final meeting of the scanning study, an important question arose: "What's the end game here?" Put differently, what principal outcome should this scanning study and its implementation strategies facilitate? After discussion, the team agreed that the overarching outcome desired is the pervasive use of a project development process in which state and local highway agencies select an effective project delivery system from a range of options that includes PPPs. An effective project delivery system is defined as one that provides the greatest benefits to society and meets the objectives of government.

The recommendations and implementation actions that follow are geared toward this end.

Short-Term Actions

1. Convene executive workshops at which representatives from countries visited or elsewhere speak directly to public and private sector decisionmakers. Providing information to both decisionmakers (executives) and those implementing the programs (directors or staff members) will benefit State DOTs.
2. Develop training guidelines for PPP program managers, procurement officers, contract managers, and financial and legal specialists that State DOTs can use to tailor development and training programs to their own needs.
3. Encourage FHWA to convert the scan team into an expert task group to implement scan findings.
4. Encourage AASHTO to establish a group focused on PPPs, perhaps as a section of one of its subcommittees. Implementing this recommendation will allow the discussion on the development of PPPs to stay active and involve stakeholders at all levels of AASHTO, State DOTs, and FHWA.
5. Create a set of state-of-the-practice publications that further highlight the lessons learned from the scanning study and possibly expand the scope of inquiry to include other nations not studied. Issues such as business case development and analysis, value-for-money and risk analysis, procurement processes, contract provisions, change management, etc., are all important topics for these publications to address.
6. Develop comparative case studies of representative projects, past and current, that highlight maturing and evolving policies and practices. For instance, the Victoria government has developed two projects, CityLink and EastLink. An indepth review of the project specifics, lessons learned, procurement changes, and program evolution would meet one of the principal objectives of the scanning study.

Midterm Actions

7. Develop a strategy to facilitate research in the following areas:
   1. Investigate advantages and disadvantages of alternative organizational forms for PPP divisions.
   2. Examine methods for identifying and analyzing candidate PPP projects.
   3. Investigate the evolution and effectiveness of KPIs.
   4. Investigate the risk mitigation practices of the private sector in PPP arrangements to determine if private participants assume real levels of risk.
   5. Investigate the determinants of concession length both domestically and abroad.
   6. Evaluate methodologies for establishing and managing toll structures.
   7. Investigate and identify appropriate metrics for assessing the benefits and costs of PPP programs and projects and overall PPP program and project performance.

Long-Term Actions

8. Develop and publish principles and guideline documents that update or complement existing documents that are similar in nature, such as the following:
   1. Establishing a PPP program
   2. Identifying and evaluating candidate PPP projects
   3. Procuring PPP projects
   4. Creating PPP contracts
   5. Managing PPP contracts
   6. Measuring PPP program and project performance