INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents four case study pairs: a P3 project and a conventional project from each of the four provincial jurisdictions that have been most active in the second wave of P3s in Canada. The P3 case studies were selected based on the following criteria. They had to:

◆  be among the first of the second-wave P3 projects initiated by the provincial infrastructure agencies, thereby providing more time over which the results of the project could be observed;

◆  involve a type of asset that is broadly representative of the asset types for which most P3s have been under-taken in that jurisdiction (e.g., a hospital project in Ontario); and

◆  allow access to data and interviews with project managers.

The case studies are intended only to be illustrative of both conventional and P3 procurement experiences. They are not strictly representative of their respective P3 or conventional procurement populations.

One could ask why we have not chosen some of the first-wave projects, which are all well into their operating phases and should provide more data and outcomes to evaluate. The reason is that the structure of the first wave of P3 transactions differs in many respects from that of the more recent P3 projects, as we explained in Chapter 1. Moreover, second-wave P3s are more relevant to the kinds of P3 projects that are likely to be undertaken in the near future, and they have received less attention in the policy literature than the first wave.

For each case study pair, we originally intended to choose a conventionally delivered infrastructure project that would provide a good comparison with the P3 project for the same jurisdiction. However, this was not possible in most cases, because of the limited information about conventional projects available in the public domain. (This paucity of information is also a by-product of the lower levels of public scrutiny and transparency for conventional projects.) In fact, the well-documented conventional projects tend to be those that have been reviewed by provincial auditors or external experts, which are often the ones that have gone wrong. Therefore, it should be no surprise that the conventional projects reviewed here are in many (but not all) cases poster-children for some glaring procurement failure. These are not necessarily representative of the overall population of large conventional infrastructure projects, but they do illustrate how procurement and project execution can differ from those in P3 projects. In instances where there are some elements of comparability, we point these out.