Public-private partnership deals no longer confidential

The Central Information Commission has ruled that the information in a PPP deal is not confidential and is open to public scrutiny. Link at http://www.hindustantimes.com/Public-private-partnership-deals-no-longer-confidential/H1-Article1-456228.aspx .The argument being made that the deal involves a public good and therefore the deal should be treated as an agreement between the public (but not the beurocracy) and the private company. But this might have a potential damage implications for the private sector companies with regards to their competency etc. The debate is quite open ended. I think this issue will roll out a series of discussions in the coming time. Will this boil down the ongoing debate whether people really have confidence that the government they elected is actually working for their own good. At it also raises the question that if I am a partner to the agreement (indirectly as government is just a representative of people) Why cant I know the deal I am actually entering into?

PPP's - long term private capital involvement.

We discussed issues related to public private partnerships, their pros and cons in class. It is clear that ultimately it is the taxpayer's money that goes into building or maintaining any kind of public service. PPP's can be seen as a means to involve private capital in infrastructure building for a long time. In traditional contract based projects also, it is private player that builds the infrastructure and hand it to government. It was only short term induction of private capital. In a project where private player retrieves his investment from tariffs, government is not getting that revenue in future but the effective benefit to the govt is that much needed infrastructure is getting built in advance which improves the general well being.
Since it is believed that private operator is better at providing quality, instead of a PPP we can go for other types of contract where private player operates(maintenance of a facility) for a fixed fee. But it only means direct investment by the government all the time. So, a PPP effectively involves private capital for long time. Apart from problems that arise in initial stages of PPP's such as procuring permits, land acquisition, many problems with PPP's arise because they are longterm. some of them are Political uncertainities, Inflation, apparent complete privatization(perception of general public) of basic provisions by the government and foreign exchange risks if global players are involved.
Another difficult or perhaps the most important challenge is to bring institutional change in general public about government has responsibility to provide all amenities absolutely free. With the advent of the PPP, the problem became more pronounced since public is reluctant to pay more tariffs(example : water). Is it reasonable to conclude that many problems faced by PPP projects are because they are longterm?

Cultural Diversity in Project World - Can it be celebrated?

Cultural influences are ofcourse nothing new. Any of us who have traveled to another country, the least to say to another state in our land of diversity, would have encountered some form of cultural differences in life.
In a mobile project world, it is quite a possibility that the project managers would end up working in a variety of cultures or work with people who reflect an array of multi-cultural perspectives. Projects around the world are found to showcase similar kinds of threats and opportunities that are non-technical and quite often identified as cultural.To name a few, some cultures invite very direct speech, while others abstain from it. Some cultures follow a very formal chain-of-command in terms of project communications, while other cultures promote a more horizontal flow of information.
A Project Manager working within a particular cultural environment will necessarily reflect that culture, both explicitly and implicitly. Now, is this a good reason to learn to value and celebrate the cultural diversity in one's project world?

Bandra-Worli Sea Link

Lessons to learn from

The Bandra-Worli Sea Link presents an interesting case-study of infrastructure planning and management issues, in line with our discussion on the Montreal Olympic Stadium. The sea-link was originally conceived of in 1960s, but received a green signal only in 1999, after studies were conducted by the Central Road Research Institute and the Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA). The Maharashtra State Road Development Corporation (MSRDC) was appointed as the nodal agency for the project in 1999. The MSRDC awarded the project to the Hindustan Construction Company (HCC), but only to see a series of failure in meeting deadlines. The initial deadline was December 2004 which was later revised to December 2007 and then to December 2008. Actual work, however, did not commence until January 2005 when the Supreme Court gave the project go-ahead. The consequences of haphazard planning and scheduling, as was evident in the Montreal case, are reflected in this example as well.

The MSRDC changed consultants in 2003 and gave entry to Egypt-based Dar Consultants. The new party brought in tremendous design changes which escalated the costs by four times (Rs 4.4 billion to Rs 16.34 billion). HCC is said to have lost about Rs 4 billion due to these changes. Thus we see the role of designing and its crucial place in the overall implementation of an infrastructure project.

In April 2009, days before the completion of the project, three sets of sub-contractors threatened to pull out due to issues with the consultants. One of them, the Roman Tarmant Ltd., was about to obtain a contract for Polymer Modified Bitumen (PMB) surfacing to provide a water-proof road. However, the company backed out due to unreasonable conditions on warranty period. The wide spectrum of players involved in an infrastructure project and the corresponding human management that the size of such projects calls for is evident in this case.

A part of the rise in costs was due to the interests on borrowings and payment to the Municipal Corporation of Greater Mumbai for a casting yard, an instance that shows how economic factors can equally inflect a project just as any other. Also to be noted is the fact that around 4000 workers and 150 engineers from India as well as China, Egypt, Canada, Switzerland and Britain are said to have participated in the project, which would have demanded micro-level cultural integration, a pointed that was highlighted in the class.

A few local issues like environmental concerns and issues pertaining to the fishermen, also surfaced during construction, which, though parochial, could have impeded the completion of the project. The Bandra-Worli sea-link, however, managed to brush such concerns aside with active political support from the state. To epilogue, this project presents many of the nuances involved in infrastructure planning and shows the amount of meticulousness that the task calls for.

Sources:
Indian Infrastructure, July 2009
"Bandra-Worli Sea Link: A Traveller's Delight", The Economic Times, June 30, 2009
(http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/News/Economy/Infrastructure/Bandra-Worli-sea-link-A-travellers-delight-/articleshow/4718082.cms)
Official Website (http://www.bandraworlisealink.com/)

Planning Infrastructure projects

In continuation to the discussion we had with regard to the planning problems pertaining to the Montreal olympic complex Case study, I would like to make a point regarding the time duration allocated to a project. Usually when we bid for a project, the successful bidder is the one who quotes the lowest. So, its basically the cost (or the expertise of the bidding company in certain cases) that we are looking into and the time constraints are not given emphasis while awarding a project. The contractor is basically bound to accept the time line given to him to execute the project. With so many projects going off track, isnt it high time we gave enough emphasis on time constraints too while bidding? Should we not give due importance to submitting the tentaive schedule for the project too while bidding.. which could probably throw light onto whetehr the contractor has done his Home work well enough..??

Augmenting Supply vs. Increasing the efficiency of use

In class, we spoke about how most power sector reforms were targeted at increasing the supply of power (i.e installing more power plants etc) and how the actual power supplied to users could also be increased by reducing transmission and distribution losses. The same is true of water. One way of solving a water scarcity problem is to treat, recycle and re-use wastewater. This way we reduce our dependency and our impact on the natural environment. The following article by Dr. R.K. Pachauri of TERI is an interesting read, and talks about the same issue.

Delhi Metro - Some Interesting Facts.

I found out an interesting article on Delhi Metro in Live Mint "Off the record" column. The link is at http://www.livemint.com/articles/2009/08/30220005/Delhi-Metro-what-counts-what.html

I sensed a tinge of bias against Delhi Metro in general, and Sreedharan in particular, in the whole article.Nevertheless, it discusses some very interesting points, on lines of what we discussed about the urban metros in our class. I am jotting some points that i felt were interesting.

• Presence of a champion figure in E. Sreedharan.
• Some form of reduction in Vigilance and audit has helped the decision making to become a lot quicker.
• Huge tax exemptions and soft loans provided are a critical factor for the success.
• Land acquisition was done under emergency clause of Land Acquisition act ! (I do not know whether we can acquire land under emergency clause for metros anymore.)
• He also makes a point towards the end about replicability and development of second string of leadership.

It is interesting to note a lot need to be done to create a facilitating environment for such projects. Such things may not have been possible if the project was done PPP way. We will have to see how the other metros handle these issues, where Delhi Metro was benefited by some extra-ordinary privileges.