Critical Success Factors for Public–Private Partnerships in Infrastructure Development

TLDR

Public‑private partnerships in infrastructure have produced mixed outcomes, with numerous factors influencing project success or failure. The study aims to develop a practical procurement protocol to enhance future PPP project performance. Using case studies, literature review, expert interviews, and a questionnaire survey, the authors identify, categorize, and rank critical success factors and their subfactors for PPPs. A five‑factor CSF package was created, and agreement analysis revealed strong concordance in ranking these factors between industry and academic experts.

Abstract

Different types of public–private partnerships (PPPs) have been practiced in worldwide infrastructure development with diverse results and a variety of problems have been encountered. A number of factors combine to determine the success or failure of an infrastructure project in terms of its objectives. There is an urgent need for a workable and efficient procurement protocol for improved practices in future PPP projects. As an important step toward the development of such a protocol, this study identifies, analyzes, and categorizes various critical success factors (CSFs) for PPPs in general based on a public–private win–win principle and a systematic research approach that includes case studies, literature review, and interviews/correspondence with international experts. A CSF package is developed that contains five main CSFs, each including a number of success subfactors (SSFs). Relative significances of these CSFs and SSFs are examined based on the results of a questionnaire survey of international expert opinions. Agreement analysis shows that there is a good agreement in the ranking of these CSFs and SSFs between respondents from the industrial sector and those from the academic sector.