Overview
Due to the globalisation a development towards privatisation of infrastructure can be observed nationally and internationally. Worldwide, various investigations show that privately managed public infrastructures show higher cost-efficiency and enable more flexible utilisation as well as change of usage.
The main research question of this project is the split and allocation of tasks in planning, project implementation and actual road maintenance of communal road networks in Switzerland to either private businesses or to municipalities.
The objective of the research project is to develop and design new models of Public Private Partnership (PPP) - Cooperations for road maintenence. Such PPP models must take the following three aspects into consideration: Conservation (Technology), Management, and Operation. Furthermore, contractual concepts for such models will be established within the proposed research project.
On the background of different strategies for maintenance, process-chains for the operational and structural maintenance will be developed.
Literature research, benchmarking, interviews, process modeling, validation processes of theoretical concepts.
Funding
Results
The main result of the project are guidelines for the introduction of PPP Cooperation in road maintenance. This guidelines consist from modules containing variations of strategies for infrstructure maintenance. Strategies can be adopted to the individual needs of municipalities.
The report contains a sequence of fundamentals as follows:
- Definition of relevant terminology concerning Public Private Partnership (PPP) and descriptionof suitable PPP modes of execution
- Specific expenses (average and range) for individual fields of operational and structuralmaintenance with subject to the size of the communes (road network)
- Performance-based specification of services for the individual tasks of operational andstructural road maintenance in communes
- Procedures for analysis of efficiency regarding operational and structural road maintenanceby means of economic comparison
- PPP process model, containing all PPP execution processes of communal road maintenance(initiation, tendering, placing, partnering, and service compliance)
- Fundamentals for contractual agreements concerning the use of PPP modes of execution
Through application of the results, decision makers in public administrations can get a first overview about their own execution of road maintenance, directly compared to the averages of specific expenses regarding individual tasks and fields of activity. This enables an effortless detection of possible deficits and potentials of the operational and structural road maintenance.
In the context of performance-based specification of services, there is a description of fundamentals on quality orientation in road maintenance, enabling communes to optimise their internal processes without PPP modes of execution.