27 A feature of PFI is that providers suffer financial deductions if they do not put certain failures right, and so the system builds in maintenance safeguards that are not always there under traditional procurement. But this is only the case if the failures contravene the agreed contract output specification, and defined availability and performance criteria. Some of the problems described in this chapter were covered by specifications (for example, a leaking roof). But others were not typically specified in the early wave school PFI schemes. They were often the difficult-to-define aspects of design that make the difference between something that is adequate and something that is best practice - for example, poor acoustics if this has not been exactly specified. This issue has been noted before - four specific examples where the output specification failed to clarify intentions have been described by the 4ps (Ref. 8). It is a considerable challenge to translate all these aspects into a useable specification, and then make it work as a performance monitoring tool.
28 There are a number of reasons why quality may not have reached best practice levels. Because the private sector has always built schools, with LEAs project-managing the process and specifying the detailed design, some of these reasons will be common to any type of procurement. The following sections deal with the most important lessons: the need for updated design standards, learning from experience, involving users effectively, improving whole-life management and taking account of wider construction industry problems.I
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I Affordability - which can also affect quality - is considered in Chapters 4 and 5.