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Public-private partnerships in building construction
Article Building & Housing
The model used by public-private partnerships (PPP) takes into account the entire life cycle of a public investment.
In public-private partnerships, private firms are commissioned in long-term contracts to take on the planning, financing, construction, maintenance and operation of public buildings and infrastructure facilities, and in some cases also their utilisation.
Taking the entire life cycle of a public investment into account helps optimise and make transparent the overall costs as compared to the traditional situation when public entities carry out the above-mentioned measures themselves. However, there is no blanket way of predicting whether the expected PPP benefits will actually translate into reality; this must be examined in each case.
The PPP is just one of several alternative procurement varieties to be looked at in an open, unbiased and transparent manner. In this context, cost-benefit analyses need to be carried out in which the expected life-cycle costs are compared, enabling the selection of a procurement variety, as required by budget law and administrative regulations and specified in manuals and specific guidelines on cost-benefit analyses and PPP projects.
PPP as the "normal" procurement variety
In recent years, the Federal Government has created suitable framework conditions and streamlined procedures, establishing PPP as the procurement norm. With regard to federal building construction, in addition to the manual on cost-benefit analyses for PPP projects, the option of PPP was included in the Federal Construction Guidelines (RBBau) as a procurement option and guidelines on cost-benefit analyses for the preparation of federal building construction projects were compiled based on a study with information on suitable data sources for cost-benefit analyses.
The websites of the Federal Institute for Research on Building, Urban Affairs and Spatial Development (BBSR) and of the ÖPP Deutschland AG provide a wide range of general information about PPPs.
Special information about PPPs in civil engineering work can be accessed on the website of VIFG mbH (Germany’s transport infrastructure financing company).
