Performance monitoring can be one of the most important facets of a public private partnership. It allows the local government to ensure that services and infrastructure are being built and provided consistent with the contract. Performance monitoring can be broken down into two components: capital projects and operations.
• Capital Projects
When infrastructure and facilities are being constructed, performance monitoring is crucial for the local government. This is especially true in any situation where the project will be transferred back to the local government.
The local government must ensure that all capital projects are constructed to specifications.
An RFP document for these facilities is often developed to encourage flexibility in design by the private sector partner. This innovation is what creates cost savings and efficiencies in the project. However, once the innovative design has been confirmed, the private sector partner will not necessarily be able to construct it as they see fit. Rather, local governments should ensure that capital projects are built to specifications and that the project provides the service that was agreed to by both public and private sector partners. This can be done through periodic inspections by an engineer or architect or other qualified individual who is either on staff or retained by the local government.
• Operations
Where the partnership arrangement involves operations, the public private partnership contract should include provisions for performance in operations. These provisions will cover not only the operations and maintenance of infrastructure and services but also the performance of the private sector partner in the delivery to the end user.
Weekly or monthly reporting structures allow the local government to monitor the performance of the private sector partner. Once the public private partnership project has been completed, a number of reports will allow the local government to discern trends and respond to problems and issues quickly. The local government should include targets, benchmarks and performance parameters in the public private partnership contract.
Another factor in operations monitoring is the quality of service received by end users. The provision of the service by the private sector partner should always have the end user's satisfaction in mind. The local government can establish phone lines for complaints, circulate surveys or have an Internet web page and e-mail address for users to voice their comments or concerns. This will allow the local government to monitor the performance of the private sector partner in terms of actual service delivery.