38. Witnesses emphasised the lack of data on traditionally procured projects necessary to make realistic value for money comparisons with private finance projects. Mr Olsen said: "I simply do not have enough reference data to compare it [private finance] with the traditional procurement method" (Q 429). The Lift Council wrote that "it is a challenge to compare the costs, performance and quality of [private finance] projects and those procured using public capital as the data for the latter group is historic and some costs, e.g. on-going maintenance and life-cycle, simply do not exist" (p 183). Similarly, Dr Stone stated that "there is very little useful data about conventional procurement" (Q 1).
39. The NAO view is that: "We have yet to come across truly robust and systematic evaluation of the use of private finance built into PPPs at either a project or programme level. The systems are not in place to collect comparable data from similar projects using different procurement routes" (p 80). They also point out that "the main reason that we have not seen such costs comparison is because departments do not collect data on whole-life costs of projects in a systematic way:
• Central Government rarely collects data from Local Government funded projects or devolved funding.
• PPP costs are rarely collated centrally, and where they are, they are hardly ever updated for contract variations.
• The costs of ongoing services for conventionally procured buildings are rarely monitored, making whole-life costs very difficult to compare.
• Different procurement routes collect data on different bases" (NAO p 105).
40. It is difficult to compare whole life costs because PFP costings include maintenance and other services over many years while costings of conventional procurement generally do not. We recommend that, in order to make possible proper comparisons between privately- financed and traditional procurement, the Government should collect on a whole-life basis cost data on some comparable traditionally- procured projects. Better data would help public authorities achieve good value for money, the main criterion of successful procurement.