Do public private partnerships (PPP projects) provide value for money for infrastructure development in Australia?

Public Private Partnerships (PPP's) are becoming an increasingly popular method for procurement of infrastructure in Australia and around the world. In this current day and age, following the recent financial crisis, it is becoming ever important for governments to achieve value for money. This paper will aim to determine whether Public Private Partnerships as a procurement process provide value for money for Public Infrastructure Development in Australia. It will also try and determine what the Australian and State Governments consider value for money. The paper used mainly secondary data through a literature review and archival analysis of various forms of secondary data which produced the following key findings; value for money is a combination of the service outcomes to be delivered by the private sector, together with the degree of risk transfer and financial implications for the government (Infrastructure Australia 2011); PPP on average produce a lower cost over-run from the budget than traditionally procured projects; and as the size and the complexity of the project increases so does the advantage of using PPP procurement process. The paper also recommends further research involving primary data collection to determine the size and types of projects for using the PPP procurement method. It also recommends a completed comparison of Traditional and PPP Projects in Australia along with a survey of general opinions of industry personnel on PPP projects and what is that they consider value for money