Infralegal’s insights into the future of the infrastructure sector.

This report explains how strategic collaboration contracts could be used by the Australian construction sector to continuously improve construction outcomes, by breaking the cycle of lost learning, reducing the sector’s excessive reliance on competitive tendering, and leveraging the prospect of further work to attract productivity-enhancing investments by suppliers.

Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) enjoy a good reputation in Australia for delivering projects on time and within budget. But there have been some high-profile failures, and they remain controversial.

The declining number of Australian PPP deals over the last 10 years indicates government interest in the PPP model is declining. This paper considers the underlying reasons for this, and what governments and equity investors can do to reinvigorate government interest in utilising private capital to deliver public infrastructure.

Collaborative contracting is more than a response to an overheated construction market. It is a mechanism that can overcome the inherently adversarial nature of conventional fixed-price contracting, and unlock significant productivity improvements.

A number of major transport projects are presently being delivered under Public Private Partnership (PPP) contracts. In each case, it was likely from the outset that the new transport system would be extended during the life of the PPP contract. Will the PPP model provide the flexibility these projects require?

To be successful in business, you need to balance your risks against the potential rewards. Taking on risks that are out of all proportion to the potential rewards is a recipe for business failure.

This paper explains how contracts can be used to cap or exclude liability for risks that are disproportionate to the rewards available under a contract. It also explains how to adopt a structured approach to the negotiation and drafting of such clauses.

This paper draws on Owen’s 30 years of experience providing legal and commercial advice on some of Australia’s most significant PPP transactions to unpack:

- what made the model attractive to Australian governments in the first place,

- how the PPP market and alternative delivery models for public infrastructure have evolved over the last 30 years; and

- what providers of private finance, particularly equity finance, should do to ensure that private finance continues to play a role in the delivery and operation of public infrastructure.