The major contract management responsibilities that the parties must assume are explicitly stated in the contracts and are, to some extent, tested. They include:
■ Fault attribution and dispute resolution - the process for attributing responsibility to faults and resolving disagreements is detailed in the contracts (see Figure 11). The process was operational during shadow running and therefore the parties at various levels gained experience of how the process is supposed to work, though with notional rather than real assignment of payment deductions for the Infracos. The parties have also had one year's experience of using the system for real since the PPPs were signed.
■ Contract changes - LUL has limited rights to vary the scope of the PPP contracts so as to require the provision of additional pre-determined assets and/or services from the Infracos such as air conditioning on SSL trains (see Case example 3 on page 36 -Scope changes).
An important factor in successful management of the PPP contracts will be the co-ordination of interfaces with other PFI contracts and national rail operations - see sections C2 and C3.