What is really a PPP Project?
- Paper number
IAC-08.E3.3.1
- Author
Mr. Steve Bochinger, Euroconsult, Canada
- Year
2008
- Abstract
The public-private partnership (PPP) is defined as an economic model where governments and the private sector share development and operational costs of infrastructure and use the private sector management skills to improve program efficiency. Because each partner concentrates on its core capabilities while relying on the other when more efficient, a PPP is supposed to bring better value for money all along the steps of the program: from the definition of its objectives and scope to service delivery. A PPP venture can take multiple forms depending on the nature of the project and to the level of control the public sector wishes to retain over the system (concession, DBOT, BOOT). In Europe, the UK was the first country to outsource the provision of infrastructure services to the private sector including water and waste management, road construction and transport as well as prisons or rail transportation. In the space sector, as a result of increasing budget constraints and program cuts, PPP/PFI models have been foreseen to finance incoming projects in Europe. PPP/PFI models seem especially appropriate to finance military satellite communications projects because defense agencies may have no strategic requirements to own and control the satellite system and may prefer to be customer of an end-to-end solution. As a result, the Skynet 5 system was successfully developed under a PPP/PFI model. Germany has recently demonstrated the applicability of a PPP model in Earth observation projects due to their dual use purpose. Two Earth observation programs are currently undertaken via PPP/PFI such as TerraSar-X/ Tandem-X and RapidEye. In the navigation sector, Europe and Japan have foreseen at the beginning to finance their systems, Galileo and QZSS systems under PPP. The first part of this article will analyze the different forms and structures of PPP/PFI contracts. In the second part the focus of the analysis will be drawn at specifics of PPP constructions in the space sector comparing it to other infrastructure sectors. Finally, the increasing trend of PPP projects concerning space activities and underlying reasons of failures in current satnav projects Galileo and QZSS will be addressed.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
(absent)