It is essential that the Government's expectations are clearly stated and understood by prospective proponents to avoid misunderstandings and costly delays. A public private partnership is first and foremost a method of procurement that seeks to achieve value for money for the Government. The level and quality of services to be delivered must therefore be defined in terms of the policy objective supporting their delivery. Agencies should assess service requirements strictly from this policy objective to avoid either wasteful over-servicing or falling short of community expectations by setting inadequate service standards. The focus of this analysis is on defining precisely the services to be provided by the private supplier, not how they are to be delivered.
The outputs to be achieved by the project must be clearly specified well in advance of any approach to the private sector. To this end, agencies should develop a comprehensive output specification that provides detailed information of the outputs to be achieved and the standards of performance expected of the provider. Documentation will concentrate on functionality and performance rather than prescriptive technical specifications over and above the minimum quality standards that may prevail in the design of particular types of assets.
The principal objective of the output specification is to allow suppliers maximum flexibility in designing and delivering efficient and effective outputs and should therefore not attempt to define project inputs or how these outputs may be achieved.