Peter Raisbeck

Comparative performance of PPPs and traditional procurement in Australia

Empirical research comparing projects procured as public–private partnerships (PPPs) with other methods of procurement is important because Australian governments plan to spend

Identifying design development factors in Australian PPP projects using an AHP framework

320 billion on infrastructure over the next decade and PPPs are perceived to be an appropriate form of delivery. Estimating cost and risks in Australian capital projects is often characterized by optimism bias—the tendency to be overly optimistic about planned actions—and is too often based on insufficient historical data on which to make decisions. Given this broad context it is important to begin to understand in detail how PPPs have performed against other forms of procurement. To achieve this, a detailed study has been undertaken to compare the project time and cost outcomes observed in the Australian PPP market with those projects delivered by governments via traditional procurement methods. Two sets or pools of projects were compared based on a detailed analysis of publicly available data for a sample of 21 PPP projects and 33 traditional projects. This selection was based on a consideration of previous studies, time and cost metrics, project size and the relative complexity of different project types. In comparing the two sets PPPs demonstrated superior cost efficiency over traditional procurement, which ranged from 30.8% when measured from project inception, to 11.4% when measured from contractual commitment to the final outcome. Between the signing of the final contract and project completion, PPPs were found to be completed 3.4% ahead of time on average, while traditional projects were completed 23.5% behind time. The overall conclusion is that PPPs provide superior performance in both the cost and time dimensions, and that the PPP advantage increases (in absolute terms) with the size and complexity of projects.

Prototype Cities in the Sea

In Australia consortiums will come together and create an initial design concept or sketch design at the public–private partnership (PPP) bid stage. If the bid is successful this initial design is then developed further. However, a winning bid may have been evaluated on financial criteria alone and the consortium’s capability to develop the design through to project delivery may not have been thoroughly evaluated. In theory, design is a key process in PPP projects and the aim of the research was to understand what capabilities are important in the development of a design through this process. To clarify these issues, a range of activities and organizational factors linked to design development are proposed using the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) method. This method was chosen in order to see which design development factors were ranked more highly by experts. In this research the hierarchy was designed employing the categories of exploratory and exploitative design development. Below each of these overarching categories, there were four design development functional distinctions: the two exploratory distinctions were Design (D) and Design Management (DM). The two exploitative distinctions were Design Support (DS) and Design Infrastructure (DI). A further list of 36 design development sub-criteria was developed under the above categories. These sub-criteria formed the basis of a survey of respondents drawn from a database of industry sources in the public domain as well as a list gathered from a large developer involved in PPP projects. It included relatively senior managers, PPP project managers and architects. Survey respondents identified a recent PPP project that they had worked on. From the 36 responses it can be seen that the exploratory Design (D) and Design Management (DM) activities were ranked more highly than the exploitative activities of Design Support (DS) and Design Infrastructure (DI) associated with a PPP project organization. This suggests that PPP frameworks should account for these exploratory factors as well as the exploitative factors associated with compliance, quality systems and project team infrastructure. This indicates that in PPP projects design development through the effective management of an initial design is a critical factor.

Distributed Intelligence in Design

This paper reviews the ambitions and importance of design proposals for inhabiting the sea from the 1960s and 1970s. Critics in subsequent decades dismissed projects for the sea as irrelevant utopias and technological fantasies. While the unique marine environment and the new city were sometimes taken up as opportunities for social and formal experiment, there are many technically resolved projects considered by architects and developers alike as viable alternatives to terrestrial cities. This paper argues that architects adopted technologies from the exploration, fishing, military and mining industries towards solving what were widely perceived as threats to human existence. Neither in ambition nor detail were these projects futuristic fantasies. They were, rather, prototypes, a model this paper uses to examine a wide variety of projects, raising questions about the validity of their testing and the reasons for their failure to flourish. Using current proposals for new cities in the sea, shifts in attitude towards community and technology are traced.

Architecture or AntiArchitecture: Robin Boyd’s Experimental Tectonics

At first glance, this book appears to be a comprehensive compilation of recent research and developments in architectural and engineering design. A flick through the pages, full of seductive parametric models, object-orientated diagrams, colourful BIM overlays and complex fabrications, looks like this might say something about the field of design as research. This is the concept that, through design, architects can conduct research in order to contribute to knowledge. For example, Weinstock (2008) cites the Water Cube at the Beijing Olympics as an example of building produced by a process of design as research. He argues that the Cube was the result of design as research into experimental forms fabricated from ‘single material systems’; ‘the research method arises from the computational simulation of the growth and morphologies of natural systems, and the abstraction from those systems of rationalized systems of repetitive but varied elements’ (Weinstock, 2008, p. 113). According to its editors, this book aims to describe the current state of knowledge and research regarding distributed design and what can be expected in the ‘next generation of architectural and engineering design and collaborative practice’ (p. xiv). The book is the result of the Distributed Intelligence in Design Symposium held in May 2009 at Salford University organized by the Mediated Intelligence in Design research group. The symposium aimed to highlight research which answered the following questions: How have parametric tools and generative design tools supplanted a previous generation of CAD tools? Moreover, how have these tools changed the nature of creative and collaborative practices and issues? How do these new tools impact on cross-disciplinary coordination and the distribution of knowledge in project organizations? These questions suggest that the book should be read by construction management researchers who are interested in what I would call design integration studies. In other words, the areas of research where design and design development processes interact with digital collaboration and innovation, knowledge management and new methods of fabrication in construction. To date, architectural design and the idea of design as research are not often seen as falling within the domain of construction management research. This points to the traditional schisms that appear to exist between architects, engineering designers and contractors and subcontractors. This is despite the fact that, in procurement theory at least, design and construction are seen to be integrated (Gray and Hughes, 2001). To date, studies within construction management have tended to focus on the professional and cultural issues related to design and architects including: organizational culture (Ankrah and Langford, 2005; Bowen et al., 2009), issues of trust (Ding et al., 2007) environmental awareness (Ofori and Kien, 2004) and gender issues (Sang et al., 2007). The idea that architects or engineering designers might also drive construction innovation has not often been examined. With rare exception, such as the research by Lu and Sexton (2006), most studies of innovation in the domain of construction management have focused on contractoror client-driven innovation. Some would argue that architects and engineers are unnecessary intermediaries who need to distance themselves from the supply chain and that it is the actors in the supply chain itself that should be responsible for innovation (Hughes, 2012). But, at first glance, this book seems to suggest some new areas of research in the field of construction management. The reason for this is twofold. First and most obvious, is the rise of building information modelling (BIM) alongside the use of parametric modelling and coding tools in architectural and engineering design. Along with this, new procurements models such as alliancing and integrated project development (IPD) suggest that the integration of design with construction is now slowly becoming a focus of research as touched on in previous studies (Walker and Hampson, 2003; Gann et al., 2005; Matthews and Howell, 2005). The beginning of this impetus is also reflected in new research and new research methodologies emerging from research centres such as the Design Innovation Research Centre at the University of Reading University (Harty and Whyte, 2010).

Performance of PPPs and Traditional Procurement in Australia

Robin Boyds reputation as one of Australias foremost public intellectuals appears to remain intact forty years after his untimely death. The factors that contribute to the continuing fascination with Boyd, and indeed his celebrity, are numerous: the early death of his father Penleigh; his Brahmin pedigree as a Boyd in Anglo-Australian genealogies; his modest suburban upbringing; his practice with Grounds and Romberg and the controversy over their split; and his association with an international vanguard of modern architects. Boyd was one of the very few Australian public intellectuals to critically benchmark Australias post war urban development. The recent reprint of The Australian Ugliness, fifty years after its first publication, attests to a continuing industry of Boyd scholarship. The revised edition contains a new foreword from the Australian novelist Christos Tsiolkas and an afterword by John Denton, Philip Goad, and Geoffrey London. Boyds books, articles, public lectures (including the Boyer lectures of 1969), radio and television appearances underpin his public reputation and remain fertile ground for cultural historians and architects alike. Yet despite all this attention, or perhaps because of it, he remains, to some extent, an enigma.