Implications for design and build contractors bidding in public-private paternership consortiums: an Australian perspective

The term design and build (D&B) is a well-established description of a procurement method in which the roles and responsibilities of the various stakeholders are clearly defined. The advent of public-private partnerships (PPPs) brings a new opportunity for design and build contractors with the concomitant challenge associated with bidding as a member of a private sector consortium with numerous stakeholders. The work described in this paper is based on an ongoing Australian Research Council (ARC) research project that is investigating the costs and the allocation of risks during the bidding process for PPPs. In the course of this research we have explored the implications for design and build contractors bidding for social (as opposed to economic) PPP projects. The conventional wisdom has been to assume that there is little difference between bidding for a conventional design and build contract as compared with submitting a design and build bid as part of a total PPP bid; however the results of our study indicate that there are subtle, and in some instances, significant differences. By way of placing the Australian experience in context, the paper also traces the emergence and growth of social infrastructure PPPs in Australia