Cognizant of criticisms that have been levelled at previous studies, we were careful not to build into our research methodology any particular bias. Given the focus of academic research on PPP projects, it was important that a methodology was developed to, in the first instance, represent the current state of the Australian PPP market. For this reason we:
• Chose to compare projects that had been contracted into the PPP market, and whose construction had been completed; and
• Did not see any methodological value in excluding or including projects that were seen as either Traditional/PPP successes or failures.
The selection criteria that we employed were designed to best reflect Australia's current PPP market alongside a pool of broadly comparable Traditional projects. These criteria were as follows: