P3s provide the opportunity to deliver some infrastructure projects, although they are not a panacea for solving all of The City's capital funding issues. In order to realize the potential benefits of P3s while minimizing the risks to The City, a comprehensive evaluation of the project is necessary. This is a time and resource intensive exercise; however failure to commit to the evaluations diligently and follow a rigorous public procurement process exposes The City to a significant risk of being encumbered with costly long-term contracts that have high public profiles. The evaluation process presented in this document follows best practices to mitigate this risk. Because of the high cost of the evaluation process, it is necessary to be selective in the projects that are evaluated.
The Council P3 policy outlines the evaluation process. A more complete Administration policy will need to be developed that details the analysis that needs to be done for each stage of the process and clearly delineates the roles and responsibilities within the Corporation to ensure that the evaluations are completed in a consistent and comprehensive manner.