Framework for PPP partner selection in K-12 educational facility procurement

Abstract

Procurement procedures to select a private partner are of immense importance to the success of public-private partnerships in the K-12 education sector. The current approaches to private-partner selection mainly rely on generic evaluations of a limited number of criteria, which do not adequately address partnership risks during construction and operation or guarantee the quality of furnished educational services during the facility lifecycle. There is a crucial necessity to develop a customized method for the selection of the private partner in educational private-partnership projects. Guided by the principal author's firsthand experience as the chair of the evaluation committee, a private-partner selection framework is developed to reduce partnership risks and evaluate the quality of proposed educational public-private partnerships. To check for risk attributes and exclude high-risk partners, an early risk-reduction stage is proposed. In addition, to account for the specific nature of educational facility procurements, a technical evaluation phase that assesses design quality, functionality and facility management services is integrated into the proposal evaluation stage. The viability and effectiveness of the developed framework are validated by an application example which illustrates that the proposed risk reduction stage and the technical evaluation phase enable the selection process to be more effective, while pursuing value for money and guaranteeing the transparency of the partnership.