Author: aschapp1

Dr. Jonathan Gifford was asked to join the International  Transport Forum (ITF)/Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Private Investment in Infrastructure: Infrastructure Risk Treatment and Moving Beyond the PPP Working Group.  Mr. Stephen Alchin from Infrastructure Australia will serve as chair. The group consists of industry experts from across the globe and they plan to investigate how risk should be treated in private participation models in infrastructure or public procurement in general.

Just a few of the key issues they will examine include examples of inefficient risk pricing in P3s,  the comparative perspective of risk pricing in regulated concessions vs. privatizations, perceptions about risks and the distinction between risk and uncertainty, and whether the risk that’s often transferred by the public sector manageable.

June 2, 2016 – This spring Vinh Mai, a George Mason undergraduate and Center Research Associate, received a research scholarship from Mason’s Office of Student Scholarship, Creative Activities and Research (OSCAR). Vinh explored how to make public-private partnership (P3) highway projects in developing countries bankable and attractive to world-class infrastructure investors. He discovered that creating an efficient and clear risk-sharing mechanism is the key and focused his research on developing a risk management framework, combining different risk identification approaches, and exploring the literature on risk-sharing preferences between public and private parties. His research culminated in a presentation he gave at the the George Mason Undergraduate Research Symposium at the Center for Art in May.

June 1, 2016 – In mid-May Vinh Mai, a Research Associate with the Center, started as an intern at CG/LA Infrastructure Group, a Washington DC based consulting firm specializing in solving the global infrastructure investment gap. As an  Infrastructure Projects Research Intern, he will examine the US infrastructure market, focusing specifically on CG/LA’s US Infrastructure Market Blueprint 2025. Vinh expects to finish his internship this August.