Karl Reichelt of Skanska works on greenfield transportation PPPs. He noted that the time frame for an unsolicited public private partnership from proposal to signed contract could be as long as five years and is three years on average for a transportation PPP. Once a contract is in place, the first ten years rarely return a profit thus leaving the private partner the remaining 20 years of the contract to recoup its investment.
Reichelt also stated that in the United States only three or four greenfield toll road PPPs make it to the contract phase each year.
Timelines can be shorter on other types of PPPs. For example, a solicited school partnership project could take only months to go from proposal to contract. However, before the proposal hits the streets, there has usually been a longer period of investigation by the public sector, with input from the private sector and/or community.
Most importantly, the pursuit of a PPP is risky with marketing, pre-proposal, and proposal costs uncompensated unless the project is awarded and a contract put in place. It is in the interest of all professional services firms to do their homework to reduce as much of the risk in pursuing PPPs as possible to minimize their exposure.