Category: Archived News

Dr. Shotaro ABE of the Japanese firm CTI Engineering Co. Ltd., in Osaka, is spending time in September visiting the Center. Dr. ABE has a growing interest in learning about the U.S. market for public-private partnerships (P3s). With the recent growth in the American P3 market, he hopes to study this trend, gather information about P3s in the U.S., and understand the differences between American and Japanese P3 developments. We are thrilled to host Dr. ABE and look forward to discussing all of these issues and learning what we can about P3s in Japan.

Aug 5, 2016

The TransInfo Symposium was held at George Mason’s Arlington campus and three of the Center’s Graduate Research Assistants presented recent research during a poster session and discussed the database that the research is based upon.  The paper is entitled “Impact of Political Risk on the Efficiency of Public-Private Partnerships,” by Jonathan Gifford, Lisardo Bolaños, Lauren McCarthy, and Jeong Yun Kweun.  As outlined in the abstract, the research examines the impact of political risk on the efficiency of delivering transportation projects using a public-private partnership approach.

Aug 5, 2016

The 14th Annual World Conference on Transport Research was held in Shanghai, China, July 10-15. The Center’s work was featured in poster presentations that were based on two research papers: “The Governance of Surface Transportation in the 21st Century: VDOT Institutional Responses to Environmental Changes” by Jonathan Gifford, Lisardo Bolaños, Nobuhiko Daito, Morghan Transue and Jeong Yun Kweun and “Evaluating Highway Public-Private Partnerships: Evidence from U.S. Value for Money Studies” by Jeong Yun Kweun, Porter K. Wheeler, and Jonathan L. Gifford.

The first paper highlights that technology, procurement, and management innovations offer ways to address deteriorating infrastructure, increased urban traffic, and tighter budgets. Decreased control over performance increases internal opposition and makes the organization vulnerable to external opposition.  To take advantage of innovations, new core competencies are needed, including contract management and public engagement. The second paper investigates the state of practice in the use of value for money (VfM) analysis of highway public-private partnership (P3) projects in the United States.

For more information about the conference please visit http://wctrs-conference.com/.

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.