TECHNICAL PAPERS
Apr 15, 2010

Critical Success Factors for PPPs in Infrastructure Developments: Chinese Perspective

Publication: Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 136, Issue 5

Abstract

With the rapid growth of the Chinese economy, the desperate demand for infrastructure developments has created bottlenecks in the country’s sustainable development. Infrastructure investment could not be funded completely by the government alone. Taking Beijing as an example, there will be about 2,400 infrastructure projects to be developed during 2006–2010 with a total investment of over RMB 470 billion, which may impose budgetary pressure on the government. As a result, public-private partnership (PPP) could be considered as a favorable option to help provide these rapidly demanded public works and services. In order to investigate the potential for adopting PPPs in the People’s Republic of China, this paper aims to explore the critical success factors (CSFs) necessary to conduct PPP projects. The views from Chinese experts were collected via an empirical questionnaire survey. The respondents were invited to rate a total of 18 CSFs that contribute to the success of PPP projects as gleaned from the contemporary literature. The results of this survey were analyzed by the factor analysis technique. The findings showed that the 18 CSFs could be grouped into five underlying factors including: Factor 1—stable macroeconomic environment; Factor 2—shared responsibility between public and private sectors; Factor 3—transparent and efficient procurement process; Factor 4—stable political and social environment; and Factor 5—judicious government control.

Get full access to this article

View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.

Acknowledgments

The work described in this paper was fully supported by a grant from the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (RGC Project No. UNSPECIFIEDPolyU 5114/05E). Sincere thanks go to Dr. Bing Li and Professor Akintola Akintoye for permitting the research team to adapt their survey questionnaire template. Special gratitude is also extended to those industrial practitioners from both China and Hong Kong, who have kindly participated in the questionnaire survey reported in this paper from October 2007 to December 2007. This paper forms part of the research project entitled “Developing a Better Practice Framework for Public Private Partnerships (PPP) in Hong Kong,” from which other deliverables have been produced with different objectives/scope but sharing common background and methodology.

References

Abdul-Rashid, A. A., Puteri, S. J. K., Ahmed, U. A., and Mastura, J. (2006). “Public private partnerships (PPP) in housing development: The experience of IJM Malaysia in Hyderabad, India.” Proc., Accelerating Excellence in the Built Environment, Univ. of Wolverhampton, Birmingham, U.K.
Akintoye, A. (2000). “Analysis of factors influencing project cost estimating practice.” Constr. Manage. Econom., 18(1), 77–89.
Akintoye, A., Beck, M., Hardcastle, C., Chinyio, E., and Asenova, D. (2001). “The financial structure of private finance initiative projects.” Proc., 17th ARCOM Annual Conf., Salford University, Manchester, U.K., 361–369.
Asian Development Bank. (2005) “Technical assistance People’s Republic of China: Application of public-private partnerships in urban railbased transportation project.” Project Number: 39527, ⟨http://www.adb.org/Documents/TARs/PRC/39527-PRC-TAR.pdf⟩ (February 9, 2010).
Awakul, P., and Ogunlana, S. O. (2002). “The effect of attitudinal differences on interface conflicts in large scale construction projects: A case study.” Constr. Manage. Econom., 20(4), 365–377.
Birnie, J. (1999). “Private finance initiative (PFI)—UK construction industry response.” J. Constr. Procure., 5(1), 5–14.
Corbett, P., and Smith, R. (2006). “An analysis of the success of the private finance initiative as the government’s preferred procurement route.” Proc., Accelerating Excellence in the Built Environment Conf., Birmingham, U.K.
Efficiency Unit. (2003). Serving the community by using the private sector—An introductory guide to public private partnerships (PPPs), Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government, Hong Kong.
El-Gohary, N. M., Osman, H., and El-Diraby, T. E. (2006). “Stakeholder management for public private partnerships.” Int. J. Proj. Manage., 24, 595–604.
Field, A. P. (2005). Discovering statistics using SPSS, 2nd Ed., Sage, London.
Fox, P., and Skitmore, M. (2007). “Factors facilitating construction industry development.” Build. Res. Inf., 35(2), 178–188.
Gentry, B. S., and Fernandez, L. O. (1997). “Evolving public-private partnerships: General themes and urban water examples.” Proc., OECD Workshop on Globalization and the Environment: Perspectives from OECD and Dynamic Non-Member Economies, OECD, Paris, 19–25.
Grant, T. (1996). “Keys to successful public-private partnerships.” Can. Bus. Rev., 23(3), 27–28.
Hardcastle, C., Edwards, P. J., Akintoye, A., and Li, B. (2005). “Critical success factors for PPP/PFI projects in the UK construction industry.” Proc., Conf. on Public Private Partnerships; Opportunities and Challenges, The Hong Kong Institution of Engineers (Civil Division) and The University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 75–83.
Jamali, D. (2004). “Success and failure mechanisms of public private partnerships (PPPs) in developing countries: Insights from the Lebanese context.” Int. J. Public Sector Management, 17(5), 414–430.
Jefferies, M. (2006). “Critical success factors of public private sector partnerships a case study of the Sydney SuperDome.” Eng., Constr., Archit. Manage., 13(5), 451–462.
Jefferies, M., Gameson, R., and Rowlinson, S. (2002). “Critical success factors of the BOOT procurement system: Reflections from the Stadium Australia case study.” Eng., Construct., Architect. Manage., 9(4), 352.
Kanter, R. M. (1999). “From spare change to real change.” Harvard Bus. Rev., 77(2), 122–132.
Lam, E. W. M., Chan, A. P. C., and Chan, D. W. M. (2008). “Determinants of successful design-build projects.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 134(5), 333–341.
Li, B. (2003). “Risk management of construction public private partnership projects.” Ph.D. thesis, Glasgow Caledonian Univ., U.K.
Li, B., Akintoye, A., Edwards, P. J., and Hardcastle, C. (2005). “Critical success factors for PPP/PFI projects in the UK construction industry.” Constrt. Manage. Econom., 23, 459–471.
Ministry of Construction. (2004). “Sample document for the franchised operation of urban water supply, gas supply and waste disposal.” Beijing.
National Treasury PPP Unit of South Africa. (2007). Public private partnership manual, ⟨http://www.treasury.gov.za/organisation/ppp/default.htm⟩ (June 15, 2007).
Nijkamp, P., Van der Burch, M., and Vindigni, G. (2002). “A comparative institutional evaluation of public private partnerships in Dutch urban land-use and revitalization projects.” Urban Stud., 39(10), 1865–1880.
Norusis, M. J. (2008). SPSS 16.0 advanced statistical procedures companion, Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, N.J.
Pett, M. A., Lackey, N. R., and Sullivan, J. J. (2003). Making sense of factor analysis: The use of factor analysis for instrument development in health care research, Sage, Thousand Oaks, Calif.
Proverbs, D. G., Holt, G. D., and Olomolaiye, P. O. (1997). “Factor influencing the choice of concrete supply methods.” Build. Res. Inform., 25(3), 176–184.
Qiao, L., Wang, S. Q., Tiong, R. L. K., and Chan, T. S. (2001). “Framework for critical success factors of BOT projects in China.” Journal of Project Finance, 7(1), 53–61.
Sato, T. (2005). Factor analysis in personality psychology, ⟨http://webspace.ship.edu/tosato/factanls.htm⟩ (May 28, 2008).
Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) users’ guide. (1997). Prentice-Hall, Upper Saddle River, N.J.
Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS). (2003). How to get more value from your survey data—Discover four advanced analysis techniques that make survey research more effective—Technical report, ⟨http://www.spss.com/no/products/spssdimensions/morevalue.pdf⟩ (Apr. 24, 2008).
Tam, C. M., Li, W. Y., and Chan, A. P. C. (1994). “BOT applications in the power industry of South East Asia: A case study in China. In East meets West.” Procurement Systems Symposium CIB W92 Proceedings Publication 175, CIB, Hong Kong, 315–322.
Tiong, R. L. K. (1996). “CSFs in competitive tendering and negotiation model for BOT projects.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 122(3), 205–211.
United Nations Economic Commission for Europe. (2007). “A guide to promoting good governance in public private partnerships.” Proc., Int. Conf. on Knowledge Sharing and Capacity Building on Promoting Successful Public Private Partnerships in the UNECE Region, ⟨http://www.unescap.org/ttdw/common/TPT/PPP/text/guide_good_governance.pdf⟩ (February 9, 2010).
Wong, A. (2007). “Lessons learned from implementing infrastructure PPPs—A view from Singapore.” Proc., Seminar jointly organized by the Department of Civil Engineering of The University of Hong Kong and Civil Division of The Hong Kong Institution of Engineers, The University of Hong Kong and The Hong Kong Institution of Engineers, Hong Kong.
Zhang, X. Q. (2005). “Critical success factors for public-private partnerships in infrastructure development.” J. Constr. Eng. Manage., 131(1), 3–14.

Information & Authors

Information

Published In

Go to Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
Volume 136Issue 5May 2010
Pages: 484 - 494

History

Received: Jun 9, 2008
Accepted: Sep 16, 2009
Published online: Apr 15, 2010
Published in print: May 2010

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Authors

Affiliations

Albert P. C. Chan [email protected]
Professor and Associate Head, Dept. of Building and Real Estate, The Hong Kong Polytechnic Univ., Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China. E-mail: [email protected]
Patrick T. I. Lam [email protected]
Associate Professor, Dept. of Building and Real Estate, The Hong Kong Polytechnic Univ., Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China. E-mail: [email protected]
Daniel W. M. Chan, M.ASCE [email protected]
Assistant Professor, Dept. of Building and Real Estate, The Hong Kong Polytechnic Univ., Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China. E-mail: [email protected]
Esther Cheung [email protected]
Research Associate, Dept. of Building and Real Estate, The Hong Kong Polytechnic Univ., Hung Hom, Kowloon, Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (corresponding author). E-mail: [email protected]
Yongjian Ke [email protected]
Ph.D. Candidate, Dept. of Construction Management, Tsinghua Univ., Beijing 100084, China. E-mail: [email protected]

Metrics & Citations

Metrics

Citations

Download citation

If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.

Cited by

View Options

Get Access

Access content

Please select your options to get access

Log in/Register Log in via your institution (Shibboleth)
ASCE Members: Please log in to see member pricing

Purchase

Save for later Information on ASCE Library Cards
ASCE Library Cards let you download journal articles, proceedings papers, and available book chapters across the entire ASCE Library platform. ASCE Library Cards remain active for 24 months or until all downloads are used. Note: This content will be debited as one download at time of checkout.

Terms of Use: ASCE Library Cards are for individual, personal use only. Reselling, republishing, or forwarding the materials to libraries or reading rooms is prohibited.
ASCE Library Card (5 downloads)
$105.00
Add to cart
ASCE Library Card (20 downloads)
$280.00
Add to cart
Buy Single Article
$35.00
Add to cart

Get Access

Access content

Please select your options to get access

Log in/Register Log in via your institution (Shibboleth)
ASCE Members: Please log in to see member pricing

Purchase

Save for later Information on ASCE Library Cards
ASCE Library Cards let you download journal articles, proceedings papers, and available book chapters across the entire ASCE Library platform. ASCE Library Cards remain active for 24 months or until all downloads are used. Note: This content will be debited as one download at time of checkout.

Terms of Use: ASCE Library Cards are for individual, personal use only. Reselling, republishing, or forwarding the materials to libraries or reading rooms is prohibited.
ASCE Library Card (5 downloads)
$105.00
Add to cart
ASCE Library Card (20 downloads)
$280.00
Add to cart
Buy Single Article
$35.00
Add to cart

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

Share

Share

Copy the content Link

Share with email

Email a colleague

Share