The focus of a PPP project is usually on delivering specified amount of services at defined levels and not on delivering a particular class/type of assets. For many projects, however, the assets created will have to be transferred back to the government and the assets may have very long life. As such, they should be usable in delivering the required amount of service much beyond the contract tenure of the project. The new assets may also require compatibility with the existing ones. In such cases, the class/type of assets may also be specified. In all cases, the preparation of details of the service/performance requirements of a project is very important.
Once the service that the implementing agency wants to provide through the project is specified, the outputs required to deliver that service have to be determined. The project has to produce those outputs in order to deliver the specified service.
There may be four types of output specifications:
• The main outputs required to deliver the specified service;
• Ancillary outputs that are not directly related to the main service (for example, a park-and-ride facility with an urban rail project or a community building facility with a power project);
• Input specifications; and
• Conditions of assets at the time of handover of the project to the government (if applicable).
As an example, the broad service specification for an urban transport project may read: to meet the travel needs of at least 50 percent passengers in a corridor by a fast and efficient mass transit system. The corresponding main output specifications may read: the design, construction, commissioning and operation of an elevated mass transit system that follows the universal design concept to provide access to all groups of users; has a capacity to carry 50,000 passengers/hour/direction at an average travel speed of 30km/hour; and is available for 16 hours everyday.
Further details on the quality aspect of each service delivery element will then have to be worked out. A common approach to specifying the quality of service outputs is to develop a matrix of key performance indicators which set the requirements for each service output. For the above project, performance indicators can be developed related to universal design of access to facilities, level of on-board loading (say, at least 40 percent passengers seated and not more than 6 standees/sq m), average waiting time at platform, average waiting time in queue to buy ticket, total ingress/egress times, ambient conditions in the vehicles, transfer arrangements to other service operators, fare collection system, etc.
Since the payment/penalty regimes of a PPP project are normally linked to service availability and its quality, the performance indicators have to be very detailed. There is, however, a problem associated with too many details. The more detailed the specification is, the closer it becomes to an input rather than an output.
Mention of any particular choice of technology may be avoided as far as possible as this may inhibit the private party to choose the most efficient technology and innovation in design. For example, rather than mentioning any particular technology in fare collection/payment, mention may be made of an electronic fare collection system that does not require fare payment for every single trip separately.